


Bunnies and Brollies

by plaidbaby



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dimmock is twelve years old and doesn't know what to do with women, F/M, Genderbend, Genderswap, Georgie is good at parenting, Mycroft is bad at relationships, People in love being stupid, Playing with canon quotes, The bunnies are good at Persian, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:50:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaidbaby/pseuds/plaidbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off the prompt:</p><p> Lestrade has Mycroft love child/children. They get kidnapped during a case. Sherlock is called in to find the kids.</p><p>Bonus points if Mycroft doesn't know about the kids (maybe coz it was all a power game to him?).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Georgie took extra time in the bathroom. She had rocked the whole slightly dangerous bird look when she was younger with her bike and leathers, the fact she could flip a man over her shoulder, had been useful when she became a copper. But that was years ago her hair was going grey a little at the edges and her face was starting to soften around the eyes. Thirty had passed her by a couple years ago and it wasn't going to come back. To say that she wasn't that girl kicking to Clash and pulling blokes with a taste for someone who could throw down, was being kind. Lestrade looked like a mix between a drill sergeant and a stuffy librarian. Clothing befitting a new DS, designed to say, I can have you over a hood in a mo if you want trouble, with her hair up in a knot where it wouldn't cloud up around her face. 

All she needed were stuffy glasses and a cardigan. She cursed, twice, hard, spitting the swears out like bullets into the sink, her hand hitting in time against the porcelain. Mycroft was different. Different than anyone she had ever dated. He was smart (much smarter than her), and so sweet with his freckles like small points of chocolate and smooth skin like milk and that long neck and arms that wrapped around her forever... She pressed the curve of palm over her lower belly; it was that trail of thought that had brought her to this point in the first place. The point was, while he wasn't really flash and burn hot, the combination of his parts made her want to lick him all over, see how much of that bird with the wild curls was left over (she believed drill sergeant librarian and wild curls were sufficient counterpoints to his sleek beauty). And he came from a rich family (the Lestrade family was brilliant in many ways, but rich they were not) and he had a steady job, he was reliable, responsible. Any woman would want him (oh his hips, some nights she could hardly...) she usually didn't think about sex this much, it was probably hormones. 

She needed to be especially pretty tonight, needed to be Georgiana and not Lestrade, not Georgie, she needed him to want her enough to want, well, whoever it was her hand was curving around. He had been a little less interested lately, which she hadn't taken offense to; she understood work, even though she had missed him in a way that made her smile at her own schoolgirl antics. Not writing their initials in a heart or anything that childish, just enjoying her crushing like it was some delicious secret. And now she did have a secret.

"That's a hug for you bunny," she said and pressed gently again at her belly, didn't know if they could feel it, they were no bigger than a pea in a pocket now, not even half that. "That's your first hug for you, from Mummy, because Mummy loves you and Daddy is a good man."

She'd never cared about anyone like this before, they'd only been going at it for a year and a half. Drinks, dinner, bed, separate and in a variety of combinations, but usually bed was in there. Sometimes though he'd come over to her flat and put his head in her lap and talk about things like the stupidity of Achilles or his dour faced tailor (she knew Mycroft was proper genius, but hadn't quite realized it until she heard Mycroft dissect and provide evidence for all of said tailor's various sins, not including the greatest of all, that superior look he always gave Mycroft because his waist fluctuated. Georgie thought said tailor a right idiot if he could see Mycroft was brilliant and had grinned when Mycroft waved off the compliment as obvious to continue with his rant) a few times they had talked entirely in French, her in broken Provenance and him in Parisian tones that rung like crystal for all its purring and sliding. Which was really the root of the problem, why she needed to be Georgiana, not Georgie, and definitely not Lestrade. Because Georgie was a little sweet and a little flirty and a lot tough, but maybe someone like Mycroft could raise a baby like someone like Georgiana. It was a pretty enough name. He always made her shiver when he said it.

And while the baby was unexpected, that didn’t mean it need to be a mistake. It wasn't really bad; he knew she wasn't on the pill, that she couldn't take it because of a hereditary condition. And they had always been careful, but, well, things sometimes break and sometimes when she opened the door he had been on a bit one minded. Maybe one of those times when he had pretty much scooped her up and thrown her giggling onto the bed. Or the sofa. Or other places. So a surprise, but not a surprise. 

She turned her head, narrowing her eyes at her hair and finally reached for the straightener.

She dressed herself with all of her precision, trying to look like something out of a magazine through pure force of will, sleekly curvaceous and irresistible. She waved down a cab in time to get to the restaurant early and settled down to wait patiently. She was a cop, she could wait for ages. Mycroft had been late before because of work, and it always flustered him (and she always brushed her fingertips against his and told him not to worry the important thing was that he had arrived) but she figured what he did was important.

“Georgiana,” said a voice to her right and Georgie looked up, smiling, happy to see him, but nervous. Her name from his mouth always stitched her through with a golden thread. Undid her.

Mycroft was there, but not in his usual dinner suit (she was a little in awe she knew the difference now), and he was standing a moment longer than he usually did before sliding into his seat, hurried. And he has his work face on. Georgie felt a sudden stab of sympathy; she knew what it was like for work to run her a little ragged. Maybe he would stay the night tonight then. She’s always loved sleeping with him, even though he always ran out before she could get the pan for breakfast. Not preferred, but she didn’t want to complain in case he stopped. “I only have a few minutes before I have to go.”

“Oh,” she said, maybe tonight wasn’t the best then, she’d never done this before, but she was fairly sure, ‘I’m pregnant, have fun solving problems at work, see you when your free,’ wasn’t the best way to tell someone they were going to be a father.

“I’ll need to be quick, and I apologize for ruining dinner, but something at work has changed rather rapidly and I’ll be away for a while. Out of the country actually.”

“Oh,” she said again brilliantly. She should say something, because if it was more than a month she didn’t want him coming back to a bump.

"I mean even though we're not really dating, I thought," Mycroft took a breath to collect himself, he looked out of sorts. He was hardly ever out of sorts, except when her clothes came off, but that was a general condition between men and women really. She needed to stop thinking about sex. She needed to stop reeling with shock. He was in his traveling clothes. “I was going to tell you tonight that I’d be out of the country for a while. I believe in honesty in relationships, even the more casual ones and so I was going to explain the situation, have a sort of farewell dinner but the timetable has shifted slightly and I was barely able to squeeze this in as it was.”

Oh.

“I’ll be gone for several years, more than you’ve even known me actually,” his mouth tightened and so did his fist. All tight white lines. Eager to leave, to be on his way. Onto something a little less casual. 

Georgie reached out and touched the wrist of his clenched hand, “I’ve always held you in the highest regard,” she started, as a segway, but she’s noticed that he was looking at her hand with an odd expression, tight, and she remembered he had no time to waste with her. “I’m sorry,” she said automatically, pulling back her hand, just like she had on their first date.

Only it had really been a first date had it.

Of course not.

“It’s fine,” he said. Polished as ever.

Georgie only half listened. Because of course, of course, she assumed stupidly that they were dating when they never actually _said_ anything to verify the fact and she had never thought, never considered... 

But then Mycroft was very kind. So quietly kind, of course he'd never _call_ her his bit of rough, but what else _could_ she be? It shouldn't even have to be said, that she was a friend… an extremely good acquaintance at least, she could rely on that. And surely, if she pressed childishly he would tell her that he was fond of her, which she didn't doubt, but... that was it, wasn't it? A passing fondness. He had never implied anything else. A man, classy like Mycroft Holmes, wouldn’t just have his woman in bed. That wouldn’t appeal to his civility at all, and yes he was cold and cutting as ice at time. But he wouldn’t cheapen her by just showing up at her flat. She pinched that thought off tightly and just stared at him, which was useless as a method of trying to impress her feelings upon him as he apparently had no interest in looking at her.

Not even really dating at all. Just attractive enough (over thirty, over caffeinated, over tired most nights) no nonsense, no trouble, (no connections, no money) her own flat and just enough dirty left over from her wild days to make things fun. It was her own fault for not seeing it, she was angry, but not at him, not yet, she would be, Georgie was nowhere near perfect. "I'm glad you stopped to tell me, I would have worried,” she said, smiling softly with a gentle, unfeeling shock, “I always do."

His smile was so sweet, not as distracted anymore, and she was utterly grateful that she got that last moment of him before he left to take the first steps toward ruling the world. Oh, that smile. She still wanted to lick it up a little, he always looked at her, stared at her, like his huge brain was taking snapshots of every part of her and filing it away for safe keeping. It made her feel immortal. He had made her feel so pretty. He looked at her fondly, but he wasn’t memorizing her any more. Maybe he hadn’t for a long time and she just ignored it because she was busy acting like a school girl. Professional, she needed to be professional before something stopped holding her together.

She was a mother now after all.

She touched his fingers lightly, just fingertip to fingertip, needing to touch him even if she was only allowed that little, "Be safe."

"Of course," he paused; face shifting, then shifted back satisfied with whatever he'd found. "And I won't monopolize your time anymore; it was always very good of you to accommodate me." His fingertips twitched against hers, "You always listened to me even when I was spouting nonsense."

"I like to listen to you, nonsense or not."

"I-" he started and she wanted to leap across the table and tell him she loved him and that she had his baby growing in her, and it was so small now but it would get bigger and she would take care of everything, she swore to it., but please come and be with the baby and let her at least love from closer than somewhere far away and important. She was too smart and had too much self-respect for that, so she smiled her sweetest, her best (please, please, I love you, you're all I want, you're all I want in the world, please, stop, stay) smile with all her love in it. He finally found something to go with the start of that sentence, "should leave actually, I'm running late already and I need to go."

"Wait," she said on some obscure feminine instinct and fetched out her coat room stub. "It's still raining out, take my umbrella, I'm sure you can get someone to send it back when you're done saving the world. Besides, it'll be finished raining by the time I leave."

"Saving the world?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"From you? I'd honestly expect nothing less," she tried for urbane, witty, but it apparently fell a little flat even though he took her stub.

He smiled kindly. He left. He didn’t look back at her. There was a man in a suit waiting by the maître de to escort him and talk about all sorts of important things no doubt. Mycroft wouldn't look back. Of course not. At least he didn't see, didn’t look up to see her follow the beautiful line of his shoulders as he left all the little people behind. A king filing through the ranks and no one knew but her and the man who had Mycroft’s eat. At least he didn't mock her, a man as brilliant as Mycroft had to have known. An outright rejection would have been too much.

She debated leaving but after a moment of introspection she discovered that while she was deeply heartbroken, a big aching cramp of the chest, her foundation was as solid as bedrock, as unshaken as it had ever it. There was a flash of rage at her psyche that she was robbed of even the comfort of an emotional breakdown. She gestured for the waiter and upon discovering that _’the gentleman had paid for her meal’_ (which was kind because both she and Mycroft know she couldn't afford to eat here on her own) she ordered something nice, healthy, but not vindictively expensive and gave strict orders to pack her the biggest piece of chocolate torte the waiter could find to go.

On her way back to her insufficient little flat she laughed suddenly as she thought she didn't even have to explain to Mycroft why she couldn't have any wine. He left too quickly.

She never got her umbrella back, but she got twins, so she wasn’t complaining.

\---

All and all the delivery wasn’t too bad.

Georgie had been slowly chafing at desk duty for months, and half hours at that, waddling around the Yard, bumping into everything. It was that or sitting at home, the room had been finished months ago and her mum and sister weren’t coming until next week when the babies were due. They had tried to ship her home a couple times but she dug in. There was only so much she could make tea, watch telly and read. Although she had taken to reading Machiavelli and crying into her orange chicken because, well, Mycroft may not want her, but she still loved him. Persistently and miserably like a child who knew they would have to wait three more hours before school was out. 

And slightly cutthroat political theory made her think of him.

She had a bit of a fit when she found out it was twins, worried that there wouldn’t be enough time. She hadn’t realized how much of her time was given to Mycroft until he had gone off to drink cocktails and flirt with women with suggestive names she didn’t doubt. A right better Bond was Mycroft for sure, he wouldn’t blow up quite as much foreign property or waste as many bullets. Probably just give Britain’s enemies a thorough talking to and have someone roll away the quivering remains. Out of nearly nine months of habit she wrapped her hands around her belly and gave it a gentle squeeze, “Hello bunnies, there’s a hug for you from Mummy. Mummy loves you.”

She felt a kind of funny little twinge but shook it off no problem. Maybe it was a little hello back. They should be capable of complex communication by now, she was approximately the sound of a panda, and not the bear either.

The new kid (what was his name Donald? Dimmon? Dorian?) was rifling through a filing cabinet with that half petulant pug face he had been wearing around a lot lately. The kid was very bright, and rather ambitious, but got a lot of ribbing for being so very young. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact he kept sneaking the peppermints by the handful from the break room like a schoolboy when he thought no one was looking. Her back pulled a little as she stood and she winced, the problem with lugging around two babies inside her was that she couldn’t ever put them down to rest her back. There was pressing feeling inside her and Georgie got her feet to shuffle a little faster toward the ladies. The dear little twins were trying to keep her active by sitting on her bladder as much as possible. 

She had to stop and brace herself against her desk as a sharp line zipped across her side. She soaked her hose (it was a racket how much they charged for maternity hose, but it was kind of worth it for the support) and her shoes and a swatch of her maternity dress as her water broke.

She closed her eyes and thought pathetically, _My mum isn’t here yet._ She wasn’t going to cry or fuss or any of those things. She was a grown woman. She was going to act like it. But that wouldn’t do, now would it? She looked around the Yard floor, everyone was gone, anyone still working was either on their beats or somewhere else. It was only her and the new kid. How was the Yard abandoned? Was there some sort of mass gathering she wasn’t aware of going on somewhere?

Right then.

“Constable,” she barked leaning against the desk. Deep breaths. Keep calm and carry on.

Constable… what _was_ his name? froze and turned toward her wide eyed. “Um,” he said helpfully.

“Hello,” she took another deep breath. “How do you do?”

“Did your water just break sir?” he asked very carefully as if she were a bomb.

“Yes actually.”

“Oh. That’s very interesting sir,” he looked like a squirrel facing down a cabbie.

“Would you like to do something about it?” she said slowly because _hello contraction._

“Yes,” he squeaked and then straightened resolute.

After a pause Georgie offered helpfully, “Take me to hospital Constable.”

On the way to the A & E Constable Dimmock (that’s what his name was, at least she was close) offered helpfully in a slightly hysterical voice, “I didn’t mean to get too personal by asking if your water broke sir. It’s just that my mother’s had children.”

Georgie decided discretion was the better part of valour on that one and had a contraction instead. “While your mother was having children did she happen to mention how close together contractions were supposed to be?”

“No, mostly Aunt Cathy came over and we had hot chocolate and watched old Doctor Who videos, except Jamie who could sleep through everything. Why do you ask?”

“My contractions seem to be a little closer together than I thought they were supposed to be,” Georgie was trying to be patient and calm. There would be something kind of oddly fitting about having her babies in a police car, but she had a feeling it would be extremely uncomfortable for all involved.

“Oh dear. Well sir, I’m confident I’m capable of delivering a child without passing out. But I’d much prefer to get you to hospital. Would you mind terribly if I put on the lights?”

“Please do,” Georgie winced.

Constable Dimmock actually did do very well, got her in and stayed by her side all the way down the hall while Georgie screamed and cursed and he passed out beautifully halfway through the twins. It was brilliant, his eyes rolled right up in his head and he just fell backward, flat as a plank. The nurses were very nice, lots of moving things around her lower half with a lot of comforting proficiency. They had asked delicately stepping over the prone form of Constable Dimmock, if he was the father. Georgie let them know between loud hissing breaths, that _no,_ because he was about twelve and he probably didn’t know what to do with girls yet. Dimmock fortunately was none the wiser to the slight to his masculine pride. She had her babies in remarkably good time and afterwards Dimmock stumbled off and got her a first rate pint of ice cream. Good times were had by all.

Her twins were beautiful, a little girl and a little boy with squished baby faces and soft bodies. They were smaller than she usually saw babies but the doctor said that was normal for twins, especially those who came a little early. She named them Bailey and Bennet respectively. The only trouble came when they asked for the father’s name. Georgie had thought about this, how even though Mycroft didn’t want anything to do with them Mycroft was the sort of man to have enemies and _they_ might not know he didn’t want anything to do with them and how was she to take care of protecting her babies against the threat of international intrigue all by herself. So when they asked she had already planned it out to be honest without showing her hand to a dangerous crowd and told them the father’s name was Nicholas Machavel.

She had thought it was quite clever.


	2. Chapter 2

It became rapidly clear that the twins were a little smarter than the usual six month olds, and not just because they cried whenever the Commissioner tried to hold them. He was arrogant and judgmental and a bit self-righteous but he was her boss so she contented herself with her children’s passive-aggressive weeping. When the bunnies discovered they could crawl they set to it with an unnatural focus that broke her heart a little in how it was like their father. Georgie had to take all that feeling, all that pain, and put it away. There would be time for that later when she didn’t need to mind them so close. Maybe when the twins were at uni. Maybe by then it will be gone, died away and dried up, not this deep ache that she kept worrying like a wedding band, round and round in her mind. It wasn’t really him she loved anyway, just the memory of him, the memory of the man she had thought she had. In love with the work of art that was the presentation of Mycroft Holmes.

That was one thing she had learned about him. Mycroft was even better at creating a mask than she had thought.

She had thought they were so close.

Now there was something new on which to spend her love. Something more important than self-pity. She was a cop; she had mastered the art of disassociation.

She read them books and sat with them while they played with the set of blocks in neon colors her sister had got them and sang Clash songs to them. (One of the baby books her mum had shoved at her said that singing helped to develop language skills.) Georgie was going to take care of her bunnies. She knew she wouldn’t have all the time she wanted to give to them. A single mother had to work, that was how it went, and she missed her job. But it would be a bittersweet return, no more snuggling in a bundle at all hours, no more long afternoons in the park anytime she felt like it. Afternoons like this would have to be pushed to those rare occasions she was off. That was something else that needed to change; she was going to have to put her foot down when she had an off day.

She’d have to make them days like today where she had bundled up her bunnies in their double stroller and rolled them to the park to experience of bit of life outside her flat. The bunnies hadn’t been too sure what to do with the outside world quite yet, when she set them down gently on their picnic blanket they had explored experimentally their new soft playground. Georgie leaned back on her hands and turned her face up to the sky, letting the sound of London and baby laughter fill her up.

Bennet blinked at her and kneaded her thigh enthusiastically; Bailey looked around her and pressed one hand affectionately to Bennet’s face. They laughed happily and knowingly at each other. Her little babies, Georgie leaned up, curling her body protectively around them. They turned their face up at her worshipfully and Georgie had to swallow something soft and hormonal down. She wrapped her arms around them and squeezed them tight, “Hugs bunnies. Mummy loves you.”

Bailey sneezed adorably into her side and then reeled at the shock of it, blinking up at Georgie from where she was snugged in, like her world had been rocked. “You alright there Bunny Two?”

Bunny One, not to be left out, pulled himself up her thigh and tried to advance across her lap, but ended up top heavy and head butted his sister. They blinked at each other, and after a brief fuss on Bailey’s part they turned out fine. Bennet’s worried little face eased as he patted Bailey’s head gently. 

“There’s my tough little bunny,” Georgie said encouragingly. They giggled hesitantly at her and each other. She was going to have to wean them soon and wasn’t that bittersweet too. It would be nice because pumping and soreness? But also so sad. There was something so precious about holding tight their warm little bodies. Something sort of bone deep satisfying. 

But her limit was coming, Bennet was a puncher. A lady was delicate in parts.

\---

Georgie’s mum was playing with Bennet, who was covered in birthday cake and looking very pleased about it while Bailey was trying to stick her fingers, blue with frosting into Georgie’s mouth. “Om Nom Nom,” Georgie said against her fingertips. This was apparently the most hilarious thing Bailey had ever heard. Oscar, the crime scene photographer, was snapping pictures like mad, he had to remove the big flash though. He had stunned the birthday bunnies who sat blinking dumbly with wide eyes for a worrying stretch of time. And of course Georgie’s sister Victoria, who liked to milk the French connection for all it was worth, was chatting him up. Which, granted, for Vicki meant asking mild questions and smiling mysteriously while leaning on one hip.

“Yeah, I do some events too, it helps supplement my income,” Oscar was saying as Victoria smiled mysteriously at him, she leaned on one hip at him. “This is just something for Lestrade though. My contribution to the gifts.”

He smiled his crooked smile at her. Oscar didn’t get out much. Probably because of his propensity to take pictures of people using a very high powered flash. 

Dimmock was loitering around the periphery. People at the Yard didn’t really like Dimmock that much, he was smart enough to open his mouth and dumb enough not to know when to keep it shut. And he was very, very young.

This had in fact been discussed before the party even started. Her mum had looked meaningfully at Dimmock and at Georgie’s nearly ginger babies to which Georgie had pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’m fond of him mum, honest I am. He’s been such a help but it’s not like that.”

“But he’s got a nice job at the Yard, and he’s so good with the babies.”

“Mum, it doesn’t bear thinking of, for one thing I feel like I’d be molesting my baby brother.”

“Georgie, you need to get married,” she looked so earnest, her dark hair almost silver white on top now. Few more years and Georgie would look that way too. “I hate it when you and Dad quarrel. I just hate it.”

“I’m not shacking up with the first man who comes along.” And really she couldn’t at all, with the sensation, almost two years gone of Mycroft’s breath panting sweetly against the crook of her neck. Murmuring things too soft to hear, but gentle against her collarbone. She had thought they were love notes and treasured them too much to edit the memory into incoherent mumblings brought on by everything else. She couldn’t date when every touch of some other earnest faced man was a prick at her memory and her conscience. Not that it should, they weren’t together, she wasn’t cheating.

She hardly thought about Mycroft more than five times a day anymore. Ten at the most.

It wasn’t really _thinking_ though. There’d be something familiar, or something she wanted to say to him and her subconscious would rush up and throw a blanket over it, toss the Mycroft-thought into storage before she was quite aware of herself. Everything else was cases and her dears, her little bunnies.

“But Tim’s such a nice boy,” Georgie’s mum said and brought her back. “And he’s hardly _just come along._ ”

Georgie sighed and called out to the living room, “Dimmock can you come here for a second?”

“Sure,” he trundled in all innocent and guileless. 

“Sex,” she said straightforward as anything, didn’t even use a sexy voice.

“W-what,” he stammered, his face turning a shade of red that she previously hadn’t thought humanly possible. He froze, absolutely terrified. He looked as though he wanted to run, but was too scared to try it.

“Six,” she said calmly, “balloons on the centerpiece thing Vicki keeps fiddling with.”

“Ohokay,” he said very quickly, fleeing the kitchen. The boy could move when scared. She should ask him if he was interested in playing on the Yard’s football team.

“Ahh,” said Georgie’s mum. “Poor little bloke. I can see how that would be a bit of a detriment.”

“I’ll find him some nice, soft little lady and they can go somewhere quietly and blush furiously at each other, but I think I might kill him on accident.”

And that thankfully was the end of that.

“Dimmock,” she tilted her head back, “can you get me something?”

“Hmm?”

“A flannel or something?”

Bailey laughed and pressed a blue hand to Georgie’s cheek.

“Oh, yeah, sure!” Dimmock really was great with the kids, part of being the middle of seven he had said. Anyone could tell he adored them. Georgie suspected he was homesick.

“Ta,” she said and pretended to eat Bunny Two’s fingers again. “Mummy’s eating you Bailey!”

Bailey squealed in delight bouncing up and down in her arms. Both of the twins were bouncers, get them laughing and they went back and forth like springs for ages. 

“Is that funny? Is that funny?” Anything was funny to a baby if you said it in a silly voice.

Bailey’s only answer was to squeal wildly and bounce up and down again. But then Bennet had noticed his sister was monopolizing Mummy time and started to flap his pudgy arms and mewling. Georgie hated when he did that, that sound was blatant emotional black mail; it made him sound like he was dying. When Dimmock returned they did a quick tradeoff. All Bailey needed was a quick, “Come see Uncle Dimmock!” and she was clapping his face, leaving blue handprints, and laughing. He just made funny faces back at her.

Bennet mewled again pathetically lolling slightly in Georgie’s mum’s arms. He was starting to do that more and more lately and Georgie wasn’t sure whether to be alarmed or not. Emotional blackmail all the way. “Time for Mummy I think,” her mum said. “Granny’s just not as interesting as all that anymore.”

Once transferred Bennet looped an arm around Georgie’s neck and started peering at everyone pointedly.

“That boy has the sharpest gaze,” said granny said. People were starting to peter out anyway, maybe it would be best to try and settle them. Cake had been eaten and chat chitted, soon the bunnies were going to start crashing from their second great sugar high. Apple juice had a powerful effect on Bailey which Georgie discovered when Bunny Two had descended on Bunny One in a flurry not to be forgotten. She had only wanted to play, but he had been set off for the rest of the day, thoroughly traumatized and fussing anytime Georgie was out of sight. 

“He’s a very clever boy, aren’t you Bunny One?”

Bennet leaned forward very carefully and pressed his face to hers. His eyes _were_ sharp.

“Clever like his father?”

“Not getting into it mum,” Georgie through a discreet eye around to be sure their private conversation was really private.

“Your dad-”

“Chose not to come all by himself,” Georgie said looking away. Bennet seemed to catch her distress and nibbled on her hair compassionately.

“Georgiana…” 

“I respect his right to miss out on his grandchildren’s first birthday party. This isn’t some kind of super man-hating decision I’ve come to, this is what’s best for me right now.”

“Alright then,” her mum said, nodding. “I don’t understand it, but I’m trusting you. You’re a big girl I’ve noticed.”

“Love you mum.”

\---

Bennet had started walking steady a little earlier than the milestone book said was the average but then he was a child of Mycroft. Once he had discovered going on two legs was a valid possibility he had screwed up his face and his courage and plodded on with the same intense concentration he used when he learned he could crawl. And now that he could walk there were all sorts of things he could get into, he was smart and curious and that meant he wanted into everything and could usually get there unless Georgie got creative. There were baby locks on the cabinets, but it had never occurred to her that Bennet would be interested in her socks, or pulling out all the sheets and creating a nest out of them. 

Now he was trying his newest trick, toddling with a serious face into the kitchen where Georgie was filling up the sippy cups. He waddled over to her, blinked up at her for a second and then slipped boneless to the floor. It would be more touching if he didn’t do it so carefully. He lay there at her feet, spread eagle, looking absolutely pathetic.

“Bunny One, how are you doing?” she looked down at him.

He sighed dramatically, his small chest rising and falling pitifully.

“You know that emotional blackmail is really below you Bunny One.”

He mewled, sprawled there on the kitchen floor.

“Alright, up we go,” he stayed boneless just until her neck came into range, at which point he became a limpet. Bailey was much more self-sufficient, if she needed attention she’d just lift a hand and say very precisely, _“Mummy.”_ Not to say she didn’t do her fair share of fussing and engaging in competitive cuddling. She just let Georgie know when she felt like it. She was, currently very carefully practicing her fine motor skills on the new DVD player. Dramatic score started up for the menu and then _press, press_ went Bailey’s little finger and some posh voice resounded roundly, _“Greece.”_

“The birthplace of Western philosophy, of democracy and of some of the greatest art and architecture the world has ever seen,” Georgie quoted along with. Bennet pulled back from her neck and peered up at her. If she was getting limpet action this morning she was going to press his milk upon him before he hid his face again. She wondered what there was about her neck that Holmeses, or half-Holmeses as the case may be, found so fascinating. That was a wrong thing to think.

The half-laugh died in her mouth and she had to look away. Her bunnies would be two, little walking, giggling, documentaries on Greece obsessed, competitive cuddling, absolutely perfect two year olds, smarter than average, more determined than average. More wonderful than she could ever imagine. Why couldn’t she put away their father, brush him away like the great berk he was? She had always given him everything, all of herself, never denied him any bit of her heart. But she should have seen, should have known, she never went to his home, other than a couple outbursts about his baby brother, he never talked about his family. Was it a huge family, a small one? Did he speak that beautiful French at the dinner table? What were his parents like?

She snorted at that, no matter what they were like they definitely wouldn’t like her. She imagined herself, bumped and bruised in a sensible suit barking orders at a flurry of constables and then their collective moues of distaste, _Oh, Mycroft dear, what an interesting… woman._ Maybe that should be a clue. That would be a good rule of thumb when she was done suffering poetically, if you can’t picture being taken to see someone’s parents, just don’t start.

Bennet made a soft sympathetic noise at her and stroked her cheek gently.

Georgie blinked down at her sweet son and burst out laughing.

“Foog?” Bailey asked, leaning the side of her face against the edge of the sofa, Georgie slipped Bailey her cup which was graciously received.

“Yeah Bunny Two, fugue,” Georgie smiled down at her, all those documentaries on Greece had been great for their vocabularies. “But Mummy can beat it. She’s a super DS. She’ll read that fugue its rights and toss it in the back of a panda.”

“Toss it!” Bennet shouted encouragingly lifting his arms high above her head. When he deigned to speak, he spoke quite well.

“Will all the bunnies be alright while Mummy goes and puts some clothes on?”

“No!” Bennet said fiercely, throwing his arms around her neck and nearly gouging her in the jugular with the sippy cup.

“Clothes,” Bailey said pulling on Georgie’s sleep set gently. Admittedly it was an old pair of Yard sweat pants and… an old undershirt of Mycroft’s that had been accidentally abandoned when he made a high speed dash out the door when she wasn’t looking. It was a little big on her because he was a man and deliciously long, which was not something Georgie ever thought about of course, and he had that lovely bit of softness about the side. There was a reason they were called love handles.

Annnnd that was probably part of Georgie’s problem. She had scoured the flat in her vengeful pregnant lady phase and hadn’t found anything big because there wasn’t anything big. There were things like sleeper cells, like a sleep shirt she had never stopped to ponder why she favored. 

First thing after the bunnies lay down to nap she was going to search the flat for anything Mycroft related. He wasn’t coming back, no need to keep whatever she found. She couldn’t believe she had kept it. That was just stupid.

“I don’t think they’ll let me go to the park in my pajamas,” Georgie tried, tilting the sippy cup pressed to her neck.

“Uh-huh,” Bennet argued elegantly.

“The sooner I dress the sooner we can go and feed the ducks.”

Bennet faltered, ducks were one of the joys of his life, right next to blocks and fresh linens. But his mummy was always working, because children were expensive. Oh her aching heart. Then brilliance hits. Well, they were young, and it wasn’t like they didn’t remember what her breasts looked like, seeing her in a bra wouldn’t scar them.

“Who wants to help Mummy get dressed?”

“Me! Me!” Bailey shouted bouncing up and down.

“Me too! I can do it too!” Bennet said and bounced in her arms.

Her children, as it turns out, lack the usual sort of fashion sense used by people who like to go out in public. But she said that they could help Mummy get dressed which was as good to a promise to a two year old, so she went out in a loud plaid that made her bunnies clap any laugh and some jeans that were probably a bit too tight for her post-pregnancy hips. There was a heated debate on her hair, and really she had no one to impress, and they liked it curly, even though she looked like someone’s crazy aunt, so she left it.

The park was a great triumph, they arrived in style in the two seated stroller that Georgie could never afford herself, it was a gift from her mother, even though it said on the card it was from Granny and Grandpapa. If she knew Grandpapa, Grandpapa didn’t know about it. 

Georgie set out the picnic blanket, a shock blanket given as a gag gift at her shower, and carefully set her bunnies up on either side of her. Bennet stood, fell, his feet unsure on the soft grass, and stood again braced on her shoulder. Bailey was more than happy to sit at Georgie’s other side as self-sufficient as always.

“Ducks!” Bennet declared with longing, but they were getting no closer to the water until he was sensible enough not to leap in after them.

“Ducks,” Bailey agreed and decided she was ready to cuddle and so half climbed into Georgie’s lap.

This, Georgie decided, is quite the good life.

\---

Things continued quite wonderfully on their traditional day off trip to the park with only a slight mishap when Bailey found a caterpillar and tried to put it in her mouth, until Richard showed up. Richard was the young side of middle aged with a kind, serious face and big blue eyes. He had been jogging, and was one of those naturally athletic people that looked good, pleasantly flushed instead of wet. He stopped to stretch a little awkwardly nearby as Georgie’s strapping the bunnies in.

She stayed between Richard and her babies, kind face, or not, it only took one case with kids.

He asked her for the time, which was an awkward pickup line as ever, which made it charming. He was a single dad, son aged five - terrified of ducks. He made Georgie laugh a little and he thought she was pretty. Honestly, the shock of a man’s regard was enough to get her to agree to take his number and to call him.

After all, why shouldn’t she?

She called him while the twins are napping and after she had put the undershirt, very nice soaps, a scarf and a dusty box of fancy tea into a small cardboard box and shoved it under her bed. There was a pair of silver and pearl earrings, still in their small box, pushed into the corner of her sock drawer that she’d decided to ignore. They were her Christmas gift, but she wasn’t keeping them for herself, the three Lestrades are comfortable, but they will never have any kind of money. She wants the earrings for Bailey when she turns eighteen.

Richard and Georgie decided on Friday, a traditional night and Georgie’s heart raced. It wasn’t that Richard was breathtaking; simply that it’d been so long. Mrs. Albright, who lived next door, and missedher grandchildren who live in Cardiff, was always good to watch the bunnies. So Georgie arranged that too. Bailey and Bennet watched her pull everything out of her closet and take it on and off. They watched her straighten her hair, and of course want their hair straightened too. Georgie gently straightens Bailey’s long soft auburn hair, careful of her small ears. Bennet acted like he wanted to have his little wisps of hair straightened too, but lost interest when it was clear the process didn’t involve being held.

Georgie and Richard met at a pub, hesitantly circling each other. It was the first time Georgie had been out to eat, other than fish and chips shared with the bunnies, since her baby shower. Diapers were expensive, so was baby food, baby clothes, her clothes and the rent. And then there was the money she was saving up to send them to a nice school. It was just something she didn’t do for now. The two years in between of home cooking with occasional food gifting from friends had given the pub, nice but nothing to fancy, an air of extraordinariness it would usually lack.

The pub was nice, the conversation was good. Good dating stuff. Georgie laughed and Richard laughed, they tell stories about their kids. They talk about work. Richard was really sweet. They connected over single parenthood and pub food.

Everything was wonderful until Richard walked her to a cab (he knew enough single parent etiquette not to try and walk her home, where her children sleep) and put an arm around her shoulder as they laughed and it was just enough man-warmth. That special flavor of heat and Georgie was gone listening to the soft controlled laughter of Mycroft Holmes that went down like very good wine and the way he curled around her body, the sensation of his long fingers tracing down her hip and the good feeling was gone.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly and lied without thinking. “I thought I could do this, but it’s still too soon after my husband died. It’s still too fresh.”

He backed off immediately, which made affection spring up in Georgie’s heart for Richard.

“I know. It’s been five years and I still miss Lisa. It’s my sister in law that keeps pushing me to get back on the market. And now I kind of want to get out there again too.”

They said goodbyes and smiled at each other, both knowing they wouldn’t call each other again and okay with that. It was a good sort of mutual understanding, no bitterness.

The next day at work she showed up with a wedding ring on. She didn’t want attention.

Bailey and Bennet are the most important things to her anyway. That’s just the way it’ll be.


	3. Chapter 3

It was in November, cold and rainy, in her twin’s third year that DS Lestrade was stabbed in pursuit of a suspect. Generally speaking, her job was more along the lines of interview and fetching things for DI Hendrickson, who was old school and still slightly unsettled by women in the police force. Hendrickson was anxious to keep her close and out of the line of danger. To tell the truth, telly lied, mostly, when it came to the work involved in police work. Which was to say, being a DS required a supply of tissues and good penmanship more than ability to keep one’s head in high speed chases and an overabundance of bullets. The higher one went, the less one really did, so that Hendrickson mostly drank coffee and yelled abuse at the male portion of Forensics when not signing his name to piles of reports and Georgie mostly talked to people and told off the press.

But every once in a while something goes wrong.

Usually it was the constables who did things like this, but everyone was on edge because of the weather and the brutality of this particular case. The scene was the kind that made Forensics sigh and call in for more evidence bags and the victim was the sort of little old lady that reminded everyone of their nan. So Georgie’s discerning eye was called into play. Constables had descended on everyone else, but the one real good lead was the next store neighbor who watched the victim’s cat. 

The kid still had baby fat and small eyes behind thick glasses the edge of immaturity clinging to him even though he had to be past thirty. Everything was fine until took off when Georgie asked him when he saw the victim last. “Constables!” she shouted over her shoulder to the new, slightly nervy constable. “We’ve got a runner!” Not exactly the letter of procedure, but Georgie’s hair had transformed from completely melted to increasingly curly and there was mud everywhere and no coffee. The lack of coffee was the greatest indignity.

There was probably something wrong with Georgie, in that once she got something in her teeth she couldn’t let it go. So when he ran she chased. While those who ran weren’t always guilty, but it meant they probably knew something. Besides she had some constables coming up behind her.

She chased the cat sitter through a maze of alleys, over a sleeping souse and through what was probably an Indian restaurant to where he was finally jumping ineffectually at a chain link fence, which was kind of pathetic, considering their merry chase that he was having real difficulty climbing a _chain link fence._ As a result she underestimated him, which as it turned out was a really stupid thing to do. He cut long, but not terribly deep as Georgie had a misspent youth and had some muscle memory left over that made her jump back, leaning her right side away and the end of his sweep. She swung her left fist, the closet to his face and hit him with a crack, her wedding ring ripping across the thin of his skin of his cheek. 

_A kiss from Mycroft,_ she thought grinning down at what looked like their new primary suspect, her ring pulled up close to her chest. One of those quick adrenal thoughts that flared up without wanting it to, and it was wrong, because the ring wasn’t Mycroft’s it was just hers. A marriage between herself and her work and the bunnies, nothing more complicated than that. Because she definitely wasn’t still in love with some berk that left her pregnant after saying farewell in a five minute wave-by, “Ta! It’s been fun! It’s been completely meaningless to me!”

Georgie was awful.

She’d say her life was awful but she had a brother and a sister that loved her and a mum that still sent secret gifts from both parents and Dimmock who was one of the dearest fake brothers in existence. And she liked her job, and most of even if she had nothing else, she had the bunnies.

Wow, apparently her reaction to being stabbed was a minor existential crisis. 

Panting slightly she tried to shake the adrenaline off. She looked down at her belly and the quick seep of blood. Not terribly deep, but something to worry about if it went on too long. She eased the knife out of his loose hand and into an evidence bag. Having no desire, as a single parent, to add difficulty to her children’s lives, she pulled off the cardigan under her trench and pressed it to the wound. Green was a shaky color for her skin tone anyway.

She called it in like a good Yarder, her sensible shoes muddy and her side aching. Donovan arrived first, breathing hard and pale looking like some warrior queen in a stab vest. The sweep of the unconscious cat sitter, glasses up around his forehead and the alley and Georgie leaning against the wall with an evidence bag in one hand, and a rolled up cardigan pressed against her belly, “You alright sir?”

“Back up would have been nice perhaps,” Georgie said from where she was leaning against the wall. She wasn’t terribly upset, but not being cut probably would have been her preference. “He cut me.”

“You had it for the first mile,” Donovan chided right back. The other constables descended on the scene taking her hard earned evidence and cuffing the cat sitter.

Oh. “Oh. Well then. Thanks, Found the murder weapon. Well, one of them at least. How far did I go?

“Just over two, sir, we almost lost you until we heard all the shouting in Hindi.” Turning her head at an elegant angle, she spoke sideways into her radio calling in codes and _officer injured._

Someday Donovan would be a DI, possibly. If she politicked right, and no one else was more aggressive, she would be DCI. She had that air about her, that _you should do what I say because I’m in charge of you. But I am not your mother so pick yourself up._ If she knew she was DCI material too early though she’d get to arrogant and lose the game. It was the same reason that Georgie wouldn’t make DI until the year before she retired if that. She had taken the test of course, there’d be more money and it would be safer for her, but that was something more to sit on than expect.

Georgie felt like she’d do a good job, Hendrickson had nothing but the best to say about her work, but she refused to play politics and she wanted to take care of everyone like it was some sort of mad compulsion. (Exhibit A Dimmock when he got food poisoning from that shaky Chinese place.) Serious Crimes was a popular unit and there weren’t a lot of DI slots. Besides with a good Inspector, a Sergeant could really do good work, get some good cases delegated.

 _To some it was given to lead,_ she thought with the sound of an ambulance fast approaching, _and some it is given to… do other stuff._

She needed to work on not getting cut again. Made her awful philosophical. 

\---

Bennet curled around her on one side and Bailey on the other. Georgie looped her arms around the two of them and squeezed them to her, “Hugs bunnies. Mummy loves you.” Dimmock had called Georgie as soon as he got off shift having been told some wild exaggeration about a fight to a death. She had told him to stop being tetchy and to pick up her bunnies from Mrs. Albright’s.

Preferably he would have taken them home and got the noodles cooking, but he was Dimmock so he had to come and stare at her with his mournful baby face.

Bailey was clinging like Georgie was about to float away her big dark eyes just about to push Georgie over the edge. Bennet just had his face jammed into her side. Dimmock wasn’t helping either, staring at her like that. Like he was very sad, or very constipated. Or very sad because he was constipated. She sighed at him.

“Did Uncle Dimmock startle you bunnies?” she rubbed their sides in slow gentle circles.

“I was okay but Webster stawtled.” Bennet had entered that portion of his life where he dealt with things via the indomitable Webster, who was as far as Georgie could determine was a giant fish. As far as imaginary friends went, giant fish were okay. If only Webster would stop getting into the linens.

“Mummy’s okay bunnies, it was just a scratch,” she said to the little bodies squeezed against her. She caught sudden inspiration, “It’s brilliant actually. Wanna see?”

“Lestrade…” Dimmock started but she shook her head at him. 

She lifted the Yard issue hoodie Dimmock had brought over so the narrow wound showed across her stomach, two auburn heads bent around her middle. The worst part of it had a neat little bit of white gauze on it and the rest looked no worse than a long scrape. “See, it looks like when Bennet scratched his arm on the closet. It made you surprised, but then afterward it didn’t really hurt did it?”

“No,” Bennet said in a little voice. 

“Was Bennet okay Bunny Two?”

“Yeah,” Bailey said, putting her little hand over the scratch. “You okay Mummy?”

“Yeah, Mummy’s okay. And I caught the bad guy. Yay.”

“Yay!” said the bunnies.

“But the nice doctor gave me some first rate medicine so Uncle Dimmock is going to have to make dinner tonight okay?”

“Ick,” Bailey said and tossed her arms around Georgie’s neck.

“Hey,” Dimmock clamped his hands on his waist.

“Unca Dimmock only makes noodles,” Bailey said, wiping her face on Georgie’s shoulder.

“I can make things other than noodles.”

“Nuh-uh,” Bennet said and suddenly good humuors had returned. Better humours. He was a sensitive soul. 

“I can make take out,” Dimmock defended his honor, like a little puffed up puppy.

“Up we go everybody, Mummy is ready to go home.” There was bit of rearranging and Georgie hoisted all of the bunnies up. They stumbled off toward the entrance, Dimmock bracing her. 

“You don’t have to Dimmock, really. You’re a bachelor, you need to start saving up.” She almost stumbled into a very lovely young lady fiddling with one of those fancy new blackberries.

“That’s what brothers are for; someone has to take care of you sometimes. You can’t just take care of everyone else.” 

Georgie grinned at him lopsidedly, “Aww, aren’t you the dearest.”

\---

Patrick Beyer, cat sitter and occasional murderer turned out to have killed six other dear old ladies all over England, the last in Kent before moving to the fertile pastures of London. There was something about how the poor old ladies were killed that didn’t set right with her. Something that nagged at her, but there was nothing in the evidence she could put her finger on, and other than a couple of necessary interviews (one with a strange young man that got her back right up, but she knew well that being peculiar wasn’t grounds for anything) the case had been closed, everyone anxious to set it away and get the whole thing to trial. Georgie had to do the basic pretrial hoop jumping, pressed, starched and uniformed up. Why had she chased him? Why had she, not a constable, talked with him? What had she done when he had attacked? Why hadn’t she been considered for advancement?

That had made her start and blink. “What?”

“Your record is good, your dedication is admirable,” the man from the board said, his uniform buttons shined up to a reflective degree that was slightly intimidating. “And I see you’ve taken the examination, why haven’t you been considered for advancement?”

“Because of the scarcity of the positions, considering, I mean the number of applicants.”

The man with his shiny buttons raises an eyebrow at Georgie, “Is that what you were told?”

“I have no reason to believe what I was told wasn’t the case,” she said a little sharply because she may be a nightmare when it comes to sucking up and office politics, but she doesn’t think that she would be lied to for no reason. “Why do you ask?”

“There has been some pressure… from certain areas,” at this he looks distinctly uncomfortable, “to review you for promotion, especially considering your case record.” Georgie blinked at him. Hendrickson must be the one putting pressure, or someone Hendrickson has convinced to put on pressure for him, who else is there that cared one way or the other? Dimmock probably, but who cared about what a constable thought? Hendrickson wanted her to be a DI because he wanted her as high off the streets as possible, always trying to push her toward desk work. This stabbing had probably finally put him over the edge. “We will look forward, Detective Sergeant Lestrade, to hearing your testimony at trial. It will be good to get this man put away. I’ve always been unsettled by serial murderers.”

As it turned out, her testimony was unnecessary; Patrick Beyer was shot in the head in front of everybody on his way up the steps. It was such a mob, press running everywhere like carts without horses, everybody shouting that whoever it was slipped away.

Georgie had talked about it with Hendrickson while she shoveled paperwork at him despite cries for mercy. (Mainly, because whether or not she would admit it, the bit of the cut under the bandage was actually quite deep and it was hard for her to run without her stitches pulling and stinging like all get out.) “You know sir, I’m almost certain the shot didn’t come from the street, after the bombings everyone would have seen someone waving around a gun. And it wouldn’t have been a straight shot by half.”

“Where are you getting these from, you’ve got boxes to torment me I swear,” he grumbled. “Where else would the shot have come from Georgie? Man like that, killed a lot people, made a lot of enemies that way I would imagine. Imagine he hurt somebody that somebody else loved, that can put people in awful tempers.

\---

Georgie’s mum, Vicky, Dimmock, the bunnies and Georgie all went out to eat to celebrate her DI-ship. After she moved her things into Hendrickson’s old office (it was lovely, lots of windows) the bunnies toddled through, trying to get into the case notes and gave their seal of approval. She set down her Arsenal mug and her picture of the bunnies and her with Bennet and Bailey enthusing over a duck that had wandered too close. Dimmock had caught wind that the Family Lestrade hadn’t been out since her ultimately depressing date with Richard. Her mum didn’t know of course, Georgie wasn’t going to go begging, not to her parents, but like every other good mate he didn’t breathe a word. In thanks she pressed a kiss to his cheek

But he ended up getting it both ways when Georgie’s Mum kissed Dimmock’s cheek too and told him he was a good boy. Since both of Dimmock’s parents were living in Dorset he blushed sweetly and let her fuss over him. 

It was also her happiness dinner, her I’m-actually-not-messing-this-up dinner, her my-kids-are-pretty-sane-except-when-it-comes-to-ducks-and-Greece dinner, and also her we’re-not-alone dinner. It was the best dinner she’d had in a long time, and not just because she didn’t have to cook it. The only thing it didn’t have was Phil who was probably still harassing his students at that public school he taught at in Yorkshire. (Just about the only way a Lestrade would ever get into public school was to be hired in.) She and Phil had bounced around the idea of maybe he working something out at the school when the bunnies were older. It was a good school and they were very smart bunnies. Except she couldn’t split them up and she couldn’t afford it. Not even if she started saving up _right now_.

Bennet had melted after his ice cream and was sucking his thumb with his head tucked under Dimmock’s neck. He really did look like he could be their uncle. Or their father. Same sweet face, same almost ginger hair. Georgie kept the idea and rolled it around in her mind a little, it was still rough around the edges, still caught in places, not clear and smooth and clean like the thought of loving Mycroft had been from the very start. But it took time to rub things smooth. Time for love to grow usually. Maybe it would last, if she went slow instead of throwing herself into it. 

Since Bennet threw an unholy fuss unless he was kept down once he was down it was only natural for Dimmock to walk her back the couple of blocks to her flat and came in to do a quick transference of Bennet from his neck to Bennet’s pillow.

“Wanna sleep with Bennet,” Bailey whinged pathetically reaching for her brother. Gently Georgie laid Bailey down in the little toddler bed and let her arrange herself to her pleasure, curled in a little knot against Bennet’s back. Once two little foreheads were kissed and the blanket was tucked gently around two little shoulders Georgie sighed and plugged in the little nightlight before retreating.

Standing conveniently in the middle of her living room was Dimmock. Tim. “Thanks Lestrade,” he said awkwardly. “I mean for letting me into your family. It’s hard to be alone and I really miss my family so it means a - ”

He kept talking as she walked over to him and set her fingertips to his cheeks, she didn’t let herself think of anything but Tim, his dear face and pressed her lips to his. It was soft and dry, pleasant, unthreatening. Very gentle. She could feel him go still, but not tighten, not pull away. Panic, or shock, was what she had been expecting, not this soft acceptance. Allowance. He set one hand to curl tenderly around her shoulder and kissed her back softly. The rough shape she was working round in her mind caught and hung and wouldn’t move another inch. This wouldn’t work.

Their faces pulled apart, but they stood still, maybe a hand’s breadth away and not moving. 

“You know I love you Georgie,” he said. “You’re very important to me.”

“But not like that,” she said softly in the little space they had made for themselves.

“And you love me too,” he said.

“But not like that either. I might as well have kissed Phil or Vicky.”

“It might be nice if I did,” he said, his hand still on her shoulder.

“It would be convenient,” she shrugged. “Can I have a hug?”

His smile was a little sad, “Always. I’m sorry.”

Putting her arms around him was far more comforting than she had expected. Once the line had been crossed and their lips had touched she had expected epic, we can’t look at each other awkwardness, but here they were comforting each other.

“I’m sorry Georgie,” he said into her shoulder. “I wish I-”

She squeezed him tight, “Let’s not make this awful and guilt ridden, we tried it and it didn’t work. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Brother and sister?” he asked.

“Brother and sister,” she agreed.

“I should get home then, unless you want me to stay for a while.”

“Nah,” Georgie waved that off. “We both have work in the morning.”

He paused before pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. “Okay. See you at the twin’s birthday.”

He looked so sweet and hopeful she had to pat him on the head and laugh, “See you there.”


	4. Chapter 4

There was something about Gregson. Something that rubbed a little wrong at the corners of her. Lots of people were shifted around after epic shootouts, she could understand that, but usually it was to more peaceable areas. London was hardly safer than whatever the little town he had been working in. She _had_ been predisposed to like him, a cop shot in the line of duty? _Everyone was predisposed to like him._ But there was just this edge to him, he was edgy. And he tended to lurk, like he was too cool. It rubbed her wrong. Still, PTSD, the Yard had some guy in a sharp suit come in and preach to them about feelings once or twice a year, she could understand PTSD. Big guy like him getting shot? Must be hard on his masculine pride too. She could sympathize. And he was trying to be nice. Talking to everyone doing the rounds. Kinda chatty but then he worked a small town, they probably all knew each other’s kids. She watched him chat with Donovan; a constable Georgie loved working with, if only because she was so delightfully down to business. Poor Donovan with her horrible taste in men.

“Lestrade, you took the pickle half,” Dimmock said, interrupting her train of thought. He had been natural in the few weeks since that night they had kissed. He had played the perfect uncle at the twins’ birthday where he had given them two duck decoys that had caused such elation as had never before been seen in the Lestrade household.

“I didn’t take the pickle half,” Georgie said back automatically, having flashbacks to being shoved between Vicky and Phil at the age of nine arguing over who has the best piece of pudding.

“You did, I have no pickles,” he shoved his half of the sandwich in her face. The sandwiches were his idea, ever since he found out that dinners out weren’t part of the Lestrade family budget, and now it was his solemn brotherly duty to bring her a sandwich once a week and complain about his roommate, also a bachelor constable, who liked to bring women home. One had given him a pinch one morning and he had been discombobulated all day. 

She flicked his ear. Little brothers needed to know their place. But she did have the pickle half so she traded with him.

“What do you think of Gregson?” she asked him.

“He’s tall.”

“Good,” she gave him a look, “you’ll make DS yet.”

“Really?”

She rolled her eyes at him, “Of course, you’ll make DI before I’m fifty I don’t doubt. You’re smart, you’ve got a mind for procedure. You’ll be a great DI.”

Donovan swaggered past flashing a slip of paper with a scrawled number on it. Georgie grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up. 

Gregson wandered over and leaned in the doorway of her office. Georgie’s grin faltered a little at that, Dimmock caught her flinch and his huge grin tightened around the edges. “DI Lestrade,” he had a big smile on his face but there was something off about it. It was too… administrative. “Tobias Gregson. Nice to meet you.”

He marched right in her office and stuck out his hand, getting tight into Dimmock’s personal space. Dimmock, of course, being as polite as pie, leaned over with that disgruntled pug look on his face. Dimmock was on occasion too cute to actually function as a living creature. He was possibly a secret teddy bear person with an unusual interest in fighting crime.

“Hello,” she said and shook his hand because anything else would be too rude.

He smiled a big movie star smile, half joking with her in a way that was actually a little charming. “I heard you’re almost as new of a DI here as I am. I’m just making my rounds, getting to know everyone,” he looked over Georgie’s office in a vague sort of way that was a little pushy.

“Bit of a change I’ll imagine,” she said, the automatic British conversationalist coming out. Even half-conscious she could chat about the weather. “From the country.”

“Bit more buildings,” he smiled a flirty little smile at her, Georgie’s eyes narrowed slightly. Pulling a little quick, wasn’t he, after getting Donovan’s number? Dimmock slid his chair over with little jerks across the carpeting so he wouldn’t have Gregson’s hip stuck in his ear. “Bigger cases too I imagine. It’s been years since I’ve lived in London, but I have family living here.”

“Oh really,” Georgie wasn’t really interested in that as much as the fact Gregson was actually being kind of rude to Dimmock who was Georgie’s little brother practically. And who, as she had promised the small delightful Dimmock mum, she minded. She minded him like any big sister should, which was why she minded when Gregson marched into her office and started pushing said little brother around.

“Yeah, my sister’s moving here with her kids, and it’s just I hope you don’t mind, but I heard you’ve got kids too,” he said as he smiled charmingly his hand curling over the edge of her desk. He was pulling like a draft horse and she was not amused. “I was wondering, since my sister doesn’t know anyone in town except me if you could recommend a pediatrician.”

Georgie smiled her not very nice smile, the one she mostly used when a suspect tried to get stroppy with her or when she got in a row with one of her siblings, or when she was rather cross, “Can’t recommend one, sorry.”

“Who do you use for you own kids I mean,” he leaned in, his hand rolled back to rest on his hip, pushing back his coat showing off the solid line of his body.

Georgie’s smile got a little sharper; he was just this side of too pushy. It was remarkably obvious that he didn’t care a fat fig about pediatricians; he was about a step away from starting to wink at her and blow her kisses. He shifted his body again so his broad chest stood out in his nice shirt. Dimmock who had taken refuge at the end of her desk, clinging to the pickle half of his sandwich valiantly, raised his eyes to his hairline.

“I just take them wherever insurance covers, luckily they haven’t been sick so I haven’t had the need which is rather helpful considering I’m a single mother,” Georgie said sternly. “Which I’m going to be polite and assume you found when you asked around; because of course you’d never try and pull a married woman. Bonus points for zeroing in on that by the way, as well as the fact that I’m very recently into my position although what you’re trying to prove by bringing that up I’m not quite sure.

“And certainly you figured out that most single mothers generally don’t have a great deal of spare money in their accounts, which is to say _any,_ especially when they live in London and have twins. Which might actually be why you keep accidently flashing your ridiculously expensive watch and your shiny expensive shirt at me while you’ve been showing off your figure. Which I’m also going to assume was accidental because you’ve been flirting rather heavily with me and if you’ve been shoving a piece of expensive jewelry in the face of someone who is a little tight financially as a way to gain their romantic attentions, that would make you rather demeaning, don’t you think? Not to mention the promotion thing. I’m just going to be kind and forget the promotion thing. 

“Which romantic attentions, baring all that, actually might be flattering if first, I hadn’t seen you exchange numbers with Sally just before heading in here, and second,” she held up her left hand, “if I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Most women sporting a wedding ring do so not to attract romantic attention but because their heart is reserved, at least traditionally. I’m not really up on what the kids are doing these days. Also might I mention you seem to be standing on Constable Dimmock. Wouldn’t you like to say hello to him?” 

Georgie found she was sitting as tall as she could, (and possibly boosting herself up on her toes a little which made her feel like one of those birds that fluff up to make themselves fearsome and therefore incredibly ridiculous) but then Gregson was massive and so she was only trying to level the field a bit) and making what she was pretty sure was her scolding face the one that made the bunnies sit nice and quietly after they’ve got into trouble.

Gregson blinked at her, his big bleached white smile fading, before something shifted slightly in his face, he turned to Dimmock who was sitting awkwardly with the pickle half of the sandwich in his hands, “Hello Constable Dimmock,” Gregson said politely.

“Nice to meet you sir,” Dimmock said, face all set in stubborn little puppy lines. “I’ve heard good things.”

“Thank you,” he smiled back, very professional, he was practically governmental. “Nice to meet you too.” They shook hands at each other very manfully before he turned back to Georgie with a serious sort of nod, “No offense meant Lestrade.”

She nodded back at him, “It’ll be a pleasure working with you.”

Unwilling to start a row, for which she was very grateful, he nodded a polite goodbye and headed out of her office. Fighting with the brand new DI just back after being shot? Not the thing that. His face had that polite, tight pinch to it that people got when they were being polite she watched him leave and had to lean her head back and sigh. “That was stupid.”

“That was brilliant,” Dimmock said in his _I just got that vintage album from the US voice._ “Did you see his face? I think he might have pissed himself a little.”

“Be nice Dimmock.”

“I think _I_ might have pissed myself a little.”

She threw a piece of lettuce at him, “Thank you for that.”

\---

There sat in bed a man halfway across the world, fully dressed except for his expensive leather shoes. He crossed his sock feet gently at the ankles and listened to Her voice as She argued with Sergeant Donovan (high romantic turnover, excellent singing voice, tough exterior, believed in a sort of self-congratulating justice). He hadn’t heard Her voice for years. 

Breathe, he made himself breathe, he stretched his neck back to rest the curve of his skull on the headboard.

The bug Gregson hid on Her desk sent a signal along discretely to the earpiece he had been wearing for the past two days. Which he was going to have to stop doing really. But later. His hand curled around the handle of his umbrella stroking it, he had to stop. He had been caught up in that sometimes. Sitting alone in strange beds across Europe pretending he wasn’t. But for now he wanted to listen.

\--- 

Georgie was not amused by the appearance of a half drugged mad man in a great flopping coat at her crime scene. He descended in a flurry of limbs, carrying on about how it was obvious because the sheep was stolen. It was not obvious to Georgie, because unless there was some sort of new agricultural fade sweeping across posh London, sheep were a little thin on the ground. Anderson chased him in circle around the corpse before the man rushed Georgie and seized her by the shoulders, his pale face desperate, “It’s so obvious! She stole the sheep.” 

“Hey!” Anderson called out, strolling over. Well, she said strolling, more like running while still trying to look cool.

“What is it?” the mad man snapped, releasing Georgie to spin, manic.

Anderson made a quick grab that the junkie dodged like a boxer, head bobbing, dancing out of reach, “Back off you insufferable git!”

“You’re mucking up my crime scene!” Anderson snarled back. They made a brief orbit of the parlor before Georgie could make a grab for him, running around the expensive furniture and the rich old lady with the bashed in head. 

“Oi! Stop that!” Georgie gestured quick to a couple of constables who smoothly intercepted the chase and hefted the man up off his feet to escort him up.

“But I can help! That’s what I _do_ now,” he was desperate and underfed, struggling like a trapped thing, hair too long, his big floppy coat stained suspiciously and looking as if he had been electrified. Her mother heart went out to him, what she would do if her bunnies were wild and mad, high and on the street? Want her bunnies back and safe. But her DI heart was not amused.

“Sorry sir,” Georgie said, “only sober people get to help.”

The man pointed accusingly at the victim’s niece, who had been first on the scene and had been herded into the hallway to stop a drunken panic attack, “She’s not sober! She’s helping!” The witness blinked and her mouth pulled down at the horror of being pointed at by a man in a dirty coat.

“She’s a witness, that different, and her sobriety, I assure you is increasing by the second leading soon, I am sure, to a full possession of her faculties. Now off you go.” 

The constables dragged him away despite his protests of, “You idiots! The sheep, the sheep!”

Anderson was left to mutter concerning the great and holy sanctity of the blessed crime scene while Georgie assured the horrified witness that there would be no more pointing by drugged up men in this investigation. To be honest, Georgie didn’t like her. She was all golden, blonde, slightly shimmery in a very expensive looking pink party dress and a necklace that looked rich enough to go to public school. Even with the vestiges of intoxication she remembered the easy beauty of grace, discoursing like she had script writers and generous contempt for the lower class. (Read: Georgie)

Someone like the woman Mycroft would marry if he hadn’t married some aristocrat from the continent already. He wouldn’t be able to abide this particular woman’s drunkenness, he believed in self-control. He was a man who lived deliberately. But everything else was perfect.

Oddly enough the thought that he was with someone else didn’t cut at her like it once did. She just wanted him to be happy settled. Hoped whatever she couldn’t give him, he could find somewhere.

That didn’t mean she was completely sans bitterness. Especially not in the face of the witness and the way she looked at Georgie’s shoes.

Her humours didn’t improve until she picked up the twins, headed home, put on Bailey’s Greek documentary and started the green beans to steam. She stilled when she heard the front door swing open and a sound like a thump, something falling, but her heart stuttered when she heard a confused, “Mycroft?”

Georgie abandoned the rice to run to the door. There was Bailey cheering on the Athenians with her duck decoy under one arm, where was Bennet? The druggie from the crime scene was lying in her doorway; she realized she had been reaching for a phantom gun and stopped wagging her hand about after it.

“Mummy, there’s a man,” Bunny One said and stuck his fingers back in his mouth.

“Yes there is, come behind me.”

Bennet toddled toward her, face serious in contemplation. The man on the floor was staring at her with a sort of focus she had only previously associated with Mycroft and the bunnies. Stepping forward slowly, she slid herself between the man and her bunny.

“I’m going to call the police and while they get here you’re going to tell me what you’re doing breaking into my apartment.”

“Don’t,” he said quickly scrambling up. “’I’m sober now, well mostly sober, the cocaine’s worn off, I get to help now.”

“You broke into my apartment to tell me you’re not high?”

“Yes, of course,” _you idiot_ went unspoken at the end of his sentence.

“You broke into my flat to prove you’re in your right mind?”

“If the rest of the Yard is this dense no wonder you’re so hopeless. I despise repetition,” he started to stand but Georgie narrowed her eyes at him.

“Stay right where you are please. As a general rule breaking into people’s flats is not on the list of proper sorts of things to do.”

The man blinked at her in wide eyed surprise, “But-”

“It’s just not,” she pinched the bridge of her nose before fetching her mobile out of her pocket. “We can talk about it in the morning when I come to see you in the cells.”

“I didn’t know. I’ll ask you first next time,” he said it very quickly, a little desperate as if he really didn’t. _(Who didn’t really know about basic breaking and entering? Well, it didn’t appear as though he broke anything, but the entering was enough.)_

“I have kids. You could be an axe murderer.”

“I’m not,” his face lit up and he scrambled in the pockets of his filthy coat. “I’m a Holmes. I’m Sherlock Holmes. I’m a consulting detective I just made it up. The only one in the world and you need me because you’re an idiot!” He said it without malice, like he was mentioning her rapidly greying hair or her black eyes or any other obvious, observable thing. Like it was written across her forehead and she caught the passport he threw at her. It did say Sherlock Holmes and it was covered in stamps, France, Russia, Italy, the kid had been running around Europe. Probably half mad if she had any guess.

Then she was sitting on the ground breathing heavily, because that right there was a brother that Mycroft worried about constantly. And if she looked at the mad kid, at Sherlock, she could see it in the way he took her apart with his eyes and his long elegant fingers. But where Mycroft was sturdy and solid, delicious and inevitable, gingerbread and chocolate, Sherlock was rampant, trembling, a child with a terrific brain; all flashes of black and white. She can see in those huge oddly slanted eyes the child in him trembling and anxious and sharp toothed as a razor on the other side. No wonder Mycroft worried.

“Oh, oh,” Sherlock said, his head going back.

“Mummy?” Bailey whimpered from the sofa.

“Everything’s fine Bunny Two. Mummy’s just fine.”

“He-” Sherlock started.

“Is not something I’m willing to discuss.”

“But you-” he tried again.

“Were a bit of rough.”

“You never really married, did you?” his quick eyes flashed to her ring.

She pressed her eyes tightly closed, “I’m married to my work.” It took her a second to test her legs before she stood up, with the edges of Sherlock’s passport pressed into her palm. 

“But why-”

“Shut your mouth,” she snapped at him and his eyes narrowed, shielded themselves. “Take off that filthy coat. You’re not having dinner at my table wearing that thing.”

Sherlock blinked up at her stunned.

“It’s nothing fancy. But you’ll eat it and you’ll like it.”

\---

“While the Bo Peep figurines are easy to acquire,” Sherlock was explaining in the same jumbled way the twins got when they were trying to explain and words were failing them. “But the sheep aren’t, they’re small and break easily. So its Mrs. Robinson, it has to be.” 

Lestrade sighed, “You’re skipping over about fifty vital steps there.” Trying to get Sherlock to explain his deductions was beyond difficult; it was all _obvious_ to him. And his brain tracked so fast she was having a hard time getting him to get the words out.

He groaned in savage frustration, flinging his arms up. He had followed her into her office in the morning prepared to his credit with his license to be a detective which meant she actually let him help legally.

There was that trick she had found online, to help the twins’ express themselves without bashing their heads in in frustration, “Sherlock, look at me. When there are too many thoughts you need to hold them like this,” she pinched her thumb and forefinger together. “Just hold your thought to slow it down.”

“That’s stupid.”

“And I can hardly understand what you’re trying to say. I know your genius is beyond comprehension but you need to work with me here. You need to slow your thoughts down because if I write in my report that the nice rich old lady killed the other nice rich old lady because the china figure sheep are missing and a mad man said so, the case will get thrown out, do you understand?”

Sherlock sighed a sigh with so much irritated subtext she almost punched him, he very deliberately pinched his thumb and forefinger together. “They were obviously in a bidding war, both collectors of the same style, china figurines. Mrs. Robinson was invited to the party so that Mrs. Leeds, the victim could- This isn’t working, it’s still too much.”

“Then hold it with something bigger Sherlock I don’t care what you do.”

He took a big breath and clapped his hands together as if he could catch the buzz of his deductions like a fly between his palms, “the victim wanted to show off her purchase privately, she invited Mrs. Robinson to the parlour. It was too much; Mrs. Robinson seized the silver tea pot-”

“The tea pot was china,” Lestrade interrupted.

“Put there as a replacement, Mrs. Leeds collected china she would never put a Wedgwood teapot with Lowestoft cups, and the sugar and creamer were both silver. Obvious,” he stopped pressing his palms together to gesture at the crime scene photos on her desk. “Seized the silver pot and bashed Mrs. Leeds in the head, might have been an accident, definitely a crime of passion. She took the figurine, whether or not Mrs. Leeds was actually dead at the point or only almost she would have looked it, and no point in wasting the murder. But she couldn’t leave the pot. Took it as well, maybe hid it? Yes, back of the parlor back cupboard, where the lesser pieces of the collection rest. She rejoined the party, no one was any the wiser. Case closed.”

“I’ll send a couple constables,” Georgie said, her face filling with a crooked smile. “But I think you may have just solved your first case for the Yard.”

And that’s how it worked Georgie argued for Sherlock with the DCI and with the hard cases (or the weird ones) she’d call Sherlock because actually, and here was a secret she wasn’t willing to share. Gregson was a poacher.

Any case that might be high profile, if it had to do with gangs or drugs, if it was a particularly vicious killing, the kind that the press loved to fluff up Gregson would pluck it right out of her hands. If Georgie didn’t know any better she would think it was just a grown up version of pulling her pigtails. But it became pretty clear pretty quickly that Gregson just had his eyes on promotion. He was smart and sly, a dangerous combination, and he had somehow zeroed in on her case load doing some sort of complicated trade system to feed her a lot of lesser cases.

Now Georgie had no desire to go chasing after danger, but it was a lot harder for a female detective than people seemed to think. The Yard believed in public equality, but were anxious about putting her in any sort of position of power, any place of effect. There was a tendency to push women in corners and have them sit quietly and provide a tally in a list of statistics to prove modernity. Sherlock was her secret weapon; if she played it right by the time Gregson strolled to the door of her office welding his big smile and a thin manila folder it would all be signed and sealed.

“Just a moment,” she said gleefully. “Just finishing the Greek case.”

Gregson blinked at her in shock and she tried very hard not to bare her teeth smugly at him, “That just came in this morning, you couldn’t have solved it by now.”

“Next door neighbor, he confessed as soon as we knocked at the door.”

“And that was it?”

“He feed his dog the victim’s pearls. And hid the murder weapon under his bed.”

“That was certainly quick.”

She blithely flipped the folder shut. She was feeling very blithe today. “New consultant helping me out.”

His eyes narrowed.

 _Ha,_ she thought.

“Is that allowed?”

“Of course it is,” she grinned at him and jauntily prepared for an exit victorious. “Once we knew where to find everything the forensic tests could be finished by… fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve got to turn this in,” she definitely had a bit of swagger in her step. “Have a lovely day.”

“Cheers.”

_Score for team Lestrade._

She dragged Sherlock home at night, pulling him away from rowing like a little girl with Anderson and planting him, bony and sharp as a paper cut between the bunnies. Someone needed to take care of the kid.

The bunnies examined him with their big dark eyes and he peered at them in mild curiosity on the occasional edge of alarm. With a still stinted contact with her family proper Georgie had to make connections where she could.

And she thought, maybe, these were good ones.

“Sherlock,” Georgie said, nursing her second cup of coffee for the morning. “Stop trying to sneak the bunnies your toast.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not as long as the other chapters, but it makes up for it in drama.

Georgie was on her way back from Dimmock’s little do. He got a promotion, but to some out of the way division, some real big honor for bright young things, so she wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. Sherlock was off doing whatever it was he did that had him strolling around London with dirt in her old tin cans. Apparently it was ‘for an experiment’ like every other odd thing he did. It was just his blanket excuse for everything she secretly suspected. Just an experiment.

A big black sedan pulled up beside and kept track with her steps. It took her a second, verifying before she tensed. She had her phone on her, and her gun as she’d popped over straight from work. But even with that she had business being concerned about a big stalker car built like a tank.

She just kept her face forward and ignored it until a voice nearly took the strength out of her knees with shock. 

“Georgiana.”

She looked. Stopped still and turned her head and looked at him. 

Mycroft. 

Mycroft Holmes. 

Mycroft bloody Holmes.

“Georgiana I would like to speak to you,” he was so cool, so composed, like seeing each other for the first time in five years was nothing. No problem. No emotional baggage.

“Here?” she said stupidly, and there’s the charm that grabbed him tight.

“No,” he said smoothly, silkily, totally unaffected while she fretted. “In private.”

“What are you doing here?”

Something shifted, she thought, in his face but she’d lost all his tells. She couldn’t be sure what his face was doing in the shadow of that car.

“It’s concerning my brother… and a few other things, and I thought it would be preferable to speak about this personally instead of sending my assistant.”

“Thank you,” she said because she probably would have a right row if he tried that. She fretted her wedding band round and round her finger.

“Please Georgiana.”

And she’s sitting in his big expensive car, her fingers pressing against the expensive leather seats. Just like that. Facing her ex-lover.

Mycroft Holmes, Mycroft bloody Holmes. 

What would he want after…

If he was after her bunnies… if he was after her bunnies she would bloody well kill him. If Sherlock ratted she’s going to find where ever he’s been holed up and give him a talking to like he’s never heard before.

“You’re looking rather,” he took a deliberate drawn out pause and wasn’t that just it when he was looking so fit and elegant and there he went, stretched out that lovely line of his neck like he didn’t know he looked like sex. “Discomposed.”

Thank you, she wanted to spit out. Yes thank you, I’m getting older and I have two overly curious children that wake me at two to ask if the Greeks ate pies and if so, what sort, and if Georgie couldn’t only make the bunnies that sort of pie forever and ever. Not to mention the mad man that hooved in, called her an idiot and stole all her tin cans. And helped her solve crimes. So yes, not as sexy as I used to be, I’m aware I’m going soft around the edges.

She doesn’t say that. She says something amiable. “It’s been a while. Nice to see you again by the way. Hope Europe’s been splendid.”

“It was adequate,” he replied, whatever that meant, he had five years to sharpen himself, hide himself and she couldn’t quite read him. His voice was smoother, he was so deliberate, and he was hardly paying her any more mind than any other copper on the street. “Congratulations on your nuptials. Belatedly.”

It took her a moment even though she had been nursing the lie for years. “Oh,” she looked down at her left hand. “I didn’t really get married; it just seemed wise to wear it.”

“Oh?”

“People treat a woman differently when they think she has a husband. Just like they treat a man different when they think he has a wife. And it was good for other things.”

“For the children?” there was a layer of irony there that was a little mean. But she wasn’t sure what it was about so she didn’t let herself get angry about it.

“Yeah,” she rolled the ring round her ring absently. Something she hadn’t done mentally or physically for a long time. It was easier to look at the winking piece of gold than at Mycroft, “People say they accept single mothers. But when it really comes down to it, if you’re not doing it to make some sort of sociopolitical point, than there’s a lot less sympathy; a ring can do a great deal.”

That was a lot to say. Maybe that was too much to say. It was too much.

“We do fine, the bunnies and I.”

Mycroft face twisted slightly before a mask descended and she couldn’t look at him because he was a stranger in Mycroft’s skin and it made her sick inside. “You also seem to have begun caring for my brother,” he had an umbrella in his hands like a cane and followed the curved line of it. It was like watching an actor on telly. Not looking at her. Looking at the curve of the handle. “I owe you an immense debt of gratitude for that, among other things. I found you…” he looked away and Georgie refused to shrink and be belittled by the way he lifted his chin and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Necessary for my comfort for a time.” 

He had become a man with no weaknesses, a man who couldn’t let anyone see he was human and she wanted to take his face between her hands and kiss him. Just softly on the forehead. And maybe the lips because it’d been a while since she’d been… comforted. Dimmock didn’t count. He finally turned back to her and flinched, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re sad,” she said. “And lonely.”

He stared at her. His face was stunned, shocked, open and she wanted to open all of him like a cupboard and put herself inside of him like she was a mismatch of domesticity (ha, her? Georgie of the bike and the arrests and the maternal inadequacies?) plates and jars of preserves yet unopened and tin cans of baby corn. 

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I wish you weren’t you know,” she bit her lip but said it anyway because they’ve been broken up for _years_ and that was being generous because technically they were never together. Not like she thought they were. “Couldn’t you just marry? You’re attractive, and smart.”

“I don’t _want to_ ,” he suddenly spat out, sounding like a petulant child. “I don’t want to date or have a long term relationship or tie myself to some insufferable woman who isn’t…” He stopped abruptly, face pulled into something like a snarl, his fingers flashed out, caught her ring and pulled it off her finger so quick that if it had been any smaller he might have hurt her. He threw it hard so it clinked off the glass of the window and fell to the floor. “ _Stop wearing that,_ you’re not _married_ you should stop wearing that.”

“Mycroft,” she said. She knew, she knew he didn’t want a relationship, but it made her feel a little better that he didn’t want to have a formal romance with any woman, not just her. Relieved a bit of the weight on her shoulders she had forgotten about. And now they were following an old rhythm, he talked she listened. Only now they were facing each other across the back seat of a stalker car and not on her sofa. “Mycroft, you need to calm down. What’s wrong?” He looked away again and she didn’t know what to do, “Why are you so-”

“I’m not,” he interrupted sharply. “I’m not. It’s been a hard… past while. My mother has suddenly decided…”

“Mycroft, I’ve never told anyone anything. If you want to tell me something I’m not going to go gossip about it.”

“My mother has decided,” he pressed his eyes very tightly closed. “That after a great many years that she is an excellent mother and that we’re all great friends and I should become involved with someone. Perpetuate the family line. I’d be afraid you’d be disappointed in me, but then you already know my character. I am not terribly fond of my mother.”

That pricked her a little, a mother did try her best, she tried and hoped she did enough, but it never quite was. He was all bent over, elbows to knees, her Mycroft. How fitting all those years ago he didn’t want her words and now he didn’t want her ring and really, if she was honest with herself, maybe all these years it wasn’t her work she had married herself too. Georgie reached out and put her fingertips along his cheek, let them stroke down, over his ear and Mycroft’s breath went shallow and ragged. “Will you stop. Please will you stop and look away so I can compose myself? I can’t take it right now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and looked away, out the window. “I’m not disappointed in you Mycroft, you’re a lot of things, at times a right pillock, but disappointing isn’t one of them.”

“Alright,” he said sounding as if he hadn’t just had a bit of a meltdown. As if he was chatting at a club. “I’m composed.”

When she looked back he was, cool and smooth, dangerously cultured. “Your brother you said,” she prompted. The switch was a bit much for her, but she could go along.

“Yes, he has been staying at your flat.”

“On and off, mostly he bursts in, calls me an idiot, and then I shove food down his throat. He’s even behaving amiably with the twins. He mostly regards them with a sort of vague distrust as if they might spontaneously combust.”

“He just appeared at your flat one day?”

“At my crime scene.”

His eyes narrowed, “He was high.” Of course Mycroft figured that out in one go. Brilliant as always.

“Yeah. I told him to come back when he was sober. He’s been doing okay,” she shifted in the seat, sliding down a little and setting her ankle on her knee. “I’m not really sure what he does when he’s not at a crime scene. I’d tell you where he was if I knew.”

“I’m quite aware of where he is,” Mycroft shifted and tilted his head deliberately. “He had a relapse; he overestimated his will power when it came to going cold turkey.”

Georgie closed her eyes tightly and took a slow deep breath. _Oh, Sherlock._

“I found him he was quite high spooning dirt into a tin can in Regent Park.”

Pressing her hand over her eyes, Georgie sighed, “Said it was for an experiment?”

“He’s quite cross I confiscated his collection of cans of dirt.”

“I can imagine. Is he alright?”

“He will be,” he looked at his hand on his umbrella, at the ring on the floor of the car, somewhere over her shoulder and then back at her, and somehow not giving anything away. “The detox will be more professionally performed this time.”

“How are you dealing?”

“I’m doing well.”

No he wasn’t.

“There’s another matter. It doesn’t take a genius to know a single mother, even one with a Detective Inspector’s salary has a tight budget,” the last two words snapped with precision. So posh and precise, “The addition of my brother at your dinner table cannot ease matters any.”

That made her tighten up a little bit, she did have her pride. She started to reach for the ring that wasn’t there but stopped. At that, Mycroft’s face tightened around the corners. “Any mother would do the same if she saw a kid half starving himself. Running mad in the streets. Have you seen that coat of his?”

Mycroft pulled a moue of distaste, “I had it burned.”

“You’ve done a service to humanity then, I was half afraid it’d start walking on its own.”

“That being said, you have given of your substance and I would like to repay you.”

“Really Mycroft,” her ankle fidgeted against her knee.

He reached for the inside of his coat and it hit her, once again, _the rich Mr. Holmes_ and her stomach went sour. “Sherlock has exceeded my expectations in eluding me these past few years. It means a great deal that you were able to provide him some necessities.”

“Don’t. I don’t want your money,” she was working up to really, actually angry.

“I can spare it for the comfort someone I… care for deeply is taken care of.”

“I don’t want your money Mycroft,” she snapped at him.

He regarded her with a strange curiosity, like she was a pet behaving oddly, “I can spare it Georgiana. I want you to have something. Consider it repayment.”

Her propped up leg slid down so both feet were on the floor, leaning forward, “And I said no. I don’t want you money. I’ve never taken a single pence from you, and I’m not starting now.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Tell your driver to stop taking the grand tour of London and pull over,” her voice, so nice just a moment before had dropped to the rough and ready smoker’s rumble she used with stroppy suspects.

“Georgiana…”

 _”Pull over._ We’re finished talking.”

“It’s just money,” there was a desperate edge to his voice, just hidden, that she wouldn’t recognize if she hadn’t heard it before.

“Be a gentleman.”

Shifting immediately, he grabbed his mobile from his pocket and typed something quick with one thumb. The two of them stared at each other, angry and hurt and all sorts of other things that she couldn’t name and soon the car slowed and pulled over.

“I have very little I actually care about. It’s not wrong to want to repay. To care for things. Everyone else does it,” he actually spat out the last part trembling. “I’m not doing anything someone else doesn’t do, or have I missed something?”

Georgie snarled right back, “Everything I did, everything I ever did for _you_ or for Sherlock I did because it was the right thing. Because it was the _good thing._ Because I care for you.”

“I’m not allowed then? You can’t give me this one thing?”

“Do whatever you want Mycroft. Just not money,” she could swallow her pride on a lot of things, accepting money from a lover, from Mycroft who treated her like a casual shag at the end, wasn’t one of them. She looked down at the ring, glinting lonely and steadfast on the dark carpeting. She wanted to go home, she felt so awful.

He spoke quickly, “I apologize. It was not my intention to distress you.”

“You’ve certainly tried your hardest,” she hated how small her voice sounded next to his. 

“I still don’t understand why you’re so angry.”

“To start with you ripped my wedding ring off my finger Mycroft. You do realize that isn’t a done thing right?” she sighed again.

“I wasn’t myself.”

“I noticed.”

He stiffened, eyes shifting.

“I’ve learned to expect a little acting like a nutter from you, but it’s not something that I enjoyed,” she sighed and scrubbed her face again. Sighing was starting to be a default with her.

And now he was angry with her. He had no right to be angry, “It means nothing, why bother with it? A symbol for a marriage that never happened.”

“Why do we do anything?”

“He means that much to you then? The twins’ father.”

Georgie didn’t need to be a DI to know the way she stiffened was telling.

“After he abandoned you. After he left you alone.”

“Lots of people leave me, that’s hardly a disqualifier.”

He had the good grace to look away at that. “He’s cost you so much, comfort, open communication with your family, the chance at romance and you still cling to him. What would you say to him? If he was right here in front of you.”

Fleeting across her mind, the temptation to tell him, end the agony, was shot down with images of her bunnies being shipped away to the Holmes public school of choice, never to be seen again until they were strangers, wrapping up in expensive clothes with tastes for expensive things and not a care for her at all.

Georgie looked him straight in the eye and held back, _I wear your memory everywhere, wrapped around my head like a wedding band and I have to wear a bit of gold or else it wears at me, round and round. I feel alone and abandoned but at night I still reach into your half of the bed and wish I had you there, and if I did I’d hold you down with my hands and make you love me have as much as I love you, but I guess it doesn’t matter because I tried that and you remained as perfect and unaffected as some angel. Some miserable god so bored with us mere mortals. And I’ve missed you every day even when I hated you and when I was angry and when I was scared and crying. Why would you leave me like that when I love you so much? I don’t have anything left to give you to make you love me. I’ve used up everything and do you know how awful it is to scream and scream for someone who can’t hear you. It’s like dying a little and I wish you could see the twins; they’re so much like you. They’re beautiful. Let’s sit down together and I’ll tell you everything about them. Wouldn’t you like that? Why are humans made this way. Why would God do this to us? But it’s not always like that. No one knows it’s like that. Because I have the twins and work and I keep taking care of the twins and I keep working, and it’s okay. It’s fine. I forgive you I think. I can’t seem to help it._ She didn’t say all that, she held all that back behind her teeth. Maybe some of that showed on her face, she wasn’t sure.

“I want you to be safe and happy. I forgive you,” she looked straight into the eyes of Mycroft Holmes and he fell back. Shot through he looked. He covered his mouth with his hand.

“I wish I was like you sometimes,” he whispered in such a small voice. “I think there’s something wrong with me.” 

All the anger went out of her as she scooped up her finger and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek.

“I don’t want his kiss.”

“This kiss is yours,” she whispered against his face. He smelled lovely. Gingerbread and chocolate.

He shuddered in his seat, so tightly wound.

“Be happy Mycroft. My best to Sherlock.”

“I’m sorry. Sometimes there’s so much in my head and none of it’s what normal people think.”

“I know. I know.” She pulled back awkwardly in the car and stumbled out, like someone exiting a cave for the first time in years. It felt like years. She felt drained. When she looked back Mycroft was looking away, hand still over his mouth. She almost said _I love you_ , but she had enough to worry about without rejection to worry about as well. “It’ll be okay Mycroft. You’ll be okay.”

She walked home, feeling like she didn’t quite fit with anything else. Like there was something wrong with her too. She was too tired to cry. The crying was done for now. The bunnies got to sleep with mummy that night. Two small space heaters curled against her sides.

Maybe there was something wrong with her too.


	6. Chapter 6

There was a rustle at the door and then the heavy sound of a great coat hung up and soft steps in the front hall. Georgie paused a moment and got down a third plate.

Sherlock stood in the door tight faced with dark circles under his eyes and a new coat. It was a nice one. A gift from Mycroft obviously, dark and suitably dramatic. He hovered there in the doorway. He looked worse than he did when he first showed up on her crime scene. Waxy and worn down. But there was a clearness to him now there wasn’t before. He looked _clean_. People who said you couldn’t tell hadn’t been around addicts.

“So. Relapse.”

His eyes snapped to her, narrowed and angry, “ _Mycroft_ told you.”

“I’m glad he did, save me from worrying.”

“He’s an interfering prat.”

“Maybe, but he does love you after his fashion. Sit down,” the bunnies lifted their heads from where they were conspiring. In Persian. She was going to have to learn it. Bailey reached out and petted Sherlock’s coat. He looked down at her in mild confusion. She said something to Bennet who scrunched up his face at her.

“No he won’t,” Bennet said in English and then said something back that made Bailey pout.

“Your children are speaking another language,” Sherlock said in that way of his mildly curious. Temporarily sated. Likely just exhausted. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes that she snatched out of his hands

“Persian. They wanted some of those language CDs for their birthday and they’ve been at it ever since. No smoking in the flat,” she put his plate in front of him as a replacement. “Second hand smoke. And don’t pull that face, if I could give it up you can put it off for a little while.”

“Give it back.”

“Eat your peas,” she leveled a look at him. 

“Yes _Mummy_ ,” he scowled and shoveled a spoonful into his mouth.

“I’ve got some cases for you to look at when you’re done, _when you’re done_ ,” she emphasized as she arranged the plates in front of the bunnies. Surprise flashed and faded over his face. “Bennet, don’t use your hands.”

“But they feel squishy.”

“Use your utensils.” 

“You’re still going to give me cases?”

“I’m not giving you anything, you’re just consulting. I don’t see why I shouldn’t, it might keep you out of trouble.”

“Can I have your ham?” Bailey asked Sherlock.

“Eat your own ham that is the proper measure of ham for five year olds,” Georgie said patting Bennet’s arm gently as a reward for his utensil use.

“He doesn’t like ham,” Bailey argued.

“Ask him did you? How do you know he doesn’t want his ham?”

“Because _I_ want it,” Georgie looked at Bailey’s plate where her slice of ham sat untouched.

“Finish your portion first and then maybe if you’re not full at the end you can have a little more. You don’t even know if you’ll have room for it.”

“I’m planning ahead.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Bailey and blocked her access to his plate by laying his arm along the table. Bennet caught the hint and slid his plate away from his sister. “Mummy,” Bailey sighed dramatically. “It’s a conspiracy.”

“Life is terrible isn’t it?”

Bailey sighed so deeply Georgie was worried her little chest might burst, “Yeah.”

And so it went. Mycroft had arranged for Sherlock to get a decent flat which Sherlock promptly got himself kicked out of and found a place for himself on Montague Street. Georgie suspected he did it just to be ornery. Sherlock had his own clients now, private clients as well as the cases she threw him in her constant efforts to best Gregson. 

Every once in a while there were trips to the park where she convinced her bunnies not to kidnap a duck, or that five was too young to drive, and mediated some bizarre Greece vs Persia arguments even though the twins have selected Persian as their secret language Bailey claimed superiority for ancient Greece since they came by their arts and science honestly and not by killing everyone and stealing all their stuff. There were other things too, fetching water for Bailey in the night and finding a skinny detective stretched out on her sofa. It was that sort of night that night, wandering into the living room in the jimjams covered in little cartoon police men (they had been a birthday present from the twins via Uncle Dimmock’s pocket book) to find Sherlock in his post-case melt down on her sofa. He had been fattening up slowly, but he was still so thin he liked to have broken her heart. She grabbed an afghan from the linen closet (the sheets on the bottom shelf were neat but out of order, Bennet must have been into them again, but he was getting smarter about his linen cuddling) and spread it as gently over the kid as she could.

“Are you nice to me because of my brother?” he asked suddenly, startling her so much she nearly toppled backward over the coffee table. 

“Sherlock!” she pressed her palm over her heart to try and still it.

“Oh. I startled you.”

“Yes, yes you did, you were lying as still as the dead.”

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?” Georgie panted. He really did startle her.

Sherlock rolled over a little before rolling his eyes, “Must I repeat everything? Are you nice to me because of my brother?”

Oh. There was a nice question for the middle of the night. She looked away. “I told you I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Why?”

If she wasn’t the mother of twins, wasn’t used to that innocent, slightly mad form of incomprehension she might have ignored him and just got on with getting water for Bailey. But she understood he was like them, didn’t get the human stuff. “Because he hurt me and every time I hear his name, or hear about him it makes me feel sad and remember the hurt.”

“That makes no sense.”

“That’s sentiment.”

“You wear the ring for reasons of sentiment.”

“I wear the ring for a lot of reasons,” she dodged. “Do you need tea or something before you go to sleep?”

“No Mummy,” he rolled his eyes at her. “Are you hinting that I should go to sleep?”

“Look at how clever you are. A right detective,” she tucked the blanket under his chin. “Go to sleep.”

He squirmed, “No, I don’t like the covers over my hands.”

“What are you a child?” she pulled back the afghan and he shivered. “Arms above your head.” He complied, just like the twins would have, she grinned at him, tucking the blanket around him again. “You know if I was anyone else. Anyone other than an aging single mum who gets up the middle of the night I’d never do this for you. Arms down now, all tucked.”

“Fine Mummy,” he said and stretched those long feet of his under the blanket like a cat. “Go away now.”

She laughed at him, soft and throaty from sleepiness, “Yes your highness.”

She might as well adopt him with all the cosseting he was getting.

****

“What is Gregson do here?” she all but shouted into the radio. Well, she did shout. She was feeling shouty. “This is my case.”

She had stepped away so the crazy man with his big guns and his hostages wouldn’t hear her yelling at the DCI.

“Gregson has experience with hostage situations,” came the voice over the line 

The DI in question was staring her down, looming over her as was his bloody wont, “Why are you so stubborn about this, all the time. I can’t look at you without you getting stroppy.”

“Don’t wave your arms at me!”

“Don’t _wave_ my _arms_ at you, what are you four?”

“This is my case Gregson,” she narrowed her eyes at him, gave him her meanest stare and watched him, straighten up at the look. She wondered if he had spent any time in the military. “I get you want to make a name, but this is my case. My investigative work.”

“Lestrade,” he said very carefully. “I am a single unmarried man. You are a single mother with young children. My life would not be worth living if you got shot. I would be failing my job. I would not be a decent human being.”

That was true. It was true. But that didn’t mean she appreciated this, this, over handedness.

Or that Gregson was revealing himself to be a bit of a real person.

“Let him take it,” said the DCI through the radio her knuckles were going white around.

Georgie narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth. She decided it wasn’t a good idea to say what she had in mind and so stomped off a few meters and back again. When she opened her mouth it still wasn’t something that was a good idea to say. She stomped away and back. “Cut the dramatics Gregson. I’m not happy with this.”

Gregson was speaking very slowly and calmly as if she might suddenly change her mind and bite his head off. She might could, wasn’t sure of it yet. “I can see that.”

She marched away and back again, “I’m really not happy about this.”

“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” he had his hands up and his posture loose as if she were a wild dog about to attack him.

Scowling she poked him in the chest with the radio, “Do not go in there all smart and sly like you’re the cat’s pajamas.”

“Cat’s pajamas?”

“I have five year olds! He’s not antagonist to authority, but he has no respect for it. Identify yourself precisely so he knows what he’s dealing with, but don’t expect him to respond to rank. Don’t get him angry or make him feel threatened. He considers the hostages ‘traitors to the Empire’ and will shoot them with little provocation. Do not really too heavily on snipers. He knows all about them, he even spotted Davis and Davis was in Iraq. Don’t pander to him, stick to duty, honor, that sort of thing, but be a bloke. If he feels you’re talking down to him he’ll shut you out. Appeal to him as an equal, someone bound by duty.”

He looked at her, waiting.

“That’s it. Did you get that?”

“I’ve got it.”

She pushed the radio at him until he held it. “Go to then, I’m heading back to the Yard. I’m actually a decent police woman you know. I actually work, not just sign paperwork and drink coffee.”

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Of course not.” She was angry, very angry. But she couldn’t argue. His logic was sound. Her march of wrath back to an available panda was interrupted by Sally.

“What was that?” Sally said. “Did Gregson just take the case?”

“Apparently he has experience with hostage negotiations.”

“They usually bring someone in for that. I thought they were bringing someone in for that.”

“Apparently they’re bringing in Gregson,” Georgie scrubbed her face. “They just moved me off the case.”

“That’s chauvinism,” Sally barked crossing her arms tight.

“No,” Georgie said softly. “It’s because I’m a single mum. What do you need?”

“It’s the freak.”

“Don’t call him-” she clenched her eyes shut under her hand. “What’s Sherlock done?”

“Breaking and entering,” Sally said with great relish. “He’s currently in holding frightening the petty criminals.”

“This day is near perfect.”

It wasn’t though, because Mycroft was there too with his umbrella and his three piece suit and his gorgeous buxom assistant. Not that she noticed. Mycroft and Georgie looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, while Sherlock practically shouted, “Oh good-” before Mycroft hit him hard in the shin with his umbrella. She wasn’t generally speaking a fan of sibling to sibling violence, but she couldn’t help a quick little laugh that she tried to hide with a cough. She didn’t hide it well. The petulance of Sherlock scowl nearly distracted her from the slight widening of Mycroft’s eyes and the way his shoulders lifted.

“I guess you…” she said to Mycroft and gestured at Sherlock.

“I try to remain abreast of Sherlock’s activities,” his hands flexed and curved over the handle of his umbrella.

“I’ll um, just…” she gestured back behind her absently. 

There was a slight shift in the assistant and Mycroft’s head shifted slightly, all of the sudden the air filled up with some sort of higher communication involving only eyebrows and slight shifts of the shoulder. Georgie shifted awkwardly. She wasn’t sure what was being said, nto said, whatever it was that Mycroft and his assistant were communicating to each other above the ken of the normal people and their little brains. She started sidling away when Mycroft spoke suddenly, “You look as though you’ve had a hard day.”

“Some days are,” she shrugged. “I’m sure you have the same.”

“Are you usually the one who comes to pick him up then?” Mycroft said smoothly, shoulders and eyebrows and hand on his umbrella all moving in tedium like some political machine.

“No, just usually when he’s harassing the PCs. I’m pretty sure most of the time when he breaks into people’s flats no one catches him.”

“Thank you for watching out for him,” Sherlock opened his mouth and Mycroft, without looking struck his in the shin again as quick as a snake with his umbrella, “I can’t say how much I appreciate having someone I can trust to make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble.”

Georgie tensed all over, she had told him she didn’t want his money.

“I only wanted to express my kind regard,” he said quickly. “That’s all.”

That was… actually a little nice. Heartbreaking a little, but everything about him broke her a little. “You’re very welcome. It’s always a pleasure to kick him back into line.” She tried a little smile; that seemed to go over well so she decided to leave it there, “I’ll leave you to it then.

It was best, really, to leave before anything else was said. 

****

The bunnies knew something was wrong as soon as she came to pick them up. She wrapped her arms around their solid little bodies, one on each side, warm and sweet smelling with the scent of Mrs. Albright’s baking and child sweat. 

“Mummy,” Bennet said with his face in her hair, hands tangled in her sensible jacket. “Do you have a fugue?”

“I’m okay Bunny One. Sometime we just have crazy days.”

“Crazy days,” Bailey concurred, hanging off Georgie with an arm looped around her neck like a particularly small drunk. “Sometimes we have those.”

“Thank you Mrs. Albright,” it took some pretty heavy pushing up with her legs, the bunnies weren’t getting any smaller, but she got them up on her hips. “I really appreciate this. I’ll get your check to you on Friday.”

“It’s a pleasure dear, they’re such good readers. Bennet’s having a little trouble focusing.”

“Boring!” Bennet declared in such perfect imitation of his uncle, complete with the imperious flick of the wrist, that Georgie snorted a laugh. 

“Is it really?” Georgie asked, as straight faced as she could master.

Bennet was experiencing some doubts as to the applicability of ‘boring’ as a blanket term, “Maybe?”

“We’ll talk about what we can do to fix that at home. Yeah?” They were so clever she could readily believe it. She tried to think about the stuff she read in secondary, all those English classes she drug her feet through more concerned with sneaking off to ride her bike or dancing with boys. She had liked Jane Eyre that girl had guts, and it wasn’t full of sentences that went on for pages. Bennet would probably like it too, he had that softer, romantic bend about him. But a mad wife in the attic might be too much for them. Maybe she could start them on Dickens. Oh! And Harry Potter and Jeeves and Wooster.

Bailey put her hand on Georgie’s chin and turned her head, “Bennet’s done now; it’s time for you to give me a kiss.”

She got so little cuddling with from Bailey that whenever it was asked for Georgie made sure to give it. She pressed a quick kiss to Bailey’s baby soft cheek and then let her little girl curl around her. “Bye Mrs. Albright, thanks.”

“Oh it’s a pleasure. Have a good evening dears!”

Georgie got an epic retelling of the twin’s day complete with periodic bursts of Persian, she was getting to know a few words, but was still woefully dense when it came to the stuff. There had apparently been a great deal of victory and making of scones for their tea.

She lasted through that, she lasted through chopping up tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce. It was a two pronged attack, lots of sauce for Bailey who wasn’t, strictly speaking, a fan of noodles and keep Bennet’s hand out of it, because he had the fine motor control, and he wasn’t a baby. He was just extraordinarily tactile, loved sensation, that was why he always wanting to roll around in the linens and run in the park with no shoes. Mycroft was a little like that too she remembered. Not the park with no shoes bit, but the way he was a sensualist, the way he treasured every second of sensation, from truffles to arranging his suit around himself. How had Mycroft not made the connection that the bunnies were his? Did he really trust her so little? Did he think she jumped into bed with someone the night he ended their _casual_ arrangement? It was the only thing that really confused her, she couldn’t think of why he wouldn’t have realised. 

The one thing she had learned when it came to Holmeses is that she would never be able to understand what went on in their minds.

Bennet and Bailey got out their duck decoys while she boiled and chopped and sautéed and wished she had someone to help. She had made dinner for Mycroft a few times and set him to chopping things. He was absolutely abysmal the first time and she had laughed and kissed his scowl away. The second time he had wielded the knife like a professional. That was Mycroft and his giant brain. Had to be good at everything.

She had to stop a moment and press the heel of her hand to her belly to get things to stop aching. After that she just listened to the Bunnies.

“The Spanish Armoire will never see us coming!” Bailey said fiercely.

“Quick Queen Elizabeth! Jump on my back! We’ll beat them for sure!” Bennet replied, full of patriotic fervor. 

The naval battle was called off on account of dinner, which was accepted as well as Georgie expected. She told them an edited version of her day and they went into more detail about theirs, they were excited to do their writing and reading and learning so that they’d be ready for school in a few months. She worried silently that primary school may not be the shining glory they were imagining and that two months was too soon, and she was still doing fine.

She was even fine when Sherlock swanned in at seven; Bailey attacked him before he got two feet in the door and shoved a sand bucket at him. “You were taking forever.”

“What’s this for? More duck plans?” 

“Psh,” Georgie leaned back a little so she could watch Bennet accost Sherlock with the bucket. “You’re meant to be the Spanish Armoire because Bailey is the Queen Elizabeth and I’m the General and we’re going to attack you with our superducks.”

“What if I don’t want to be attacked by superducks?”

“You have to, you’re the Spanish Armoire!”

“I think you mean Armada.”

“They didn’t have cars back then,” Bennet told him seriously and Sherlock’s face sort of went blank like he just couldn’t compute. Bennet took advantage of this by grabbing Sherlock’s coat sleeve to carry him away. Georgie wasn’t quite sure Sherlock knew how to play pretend; as it turned out he didn’t have much to do anyway, just sit on the ground holding the bucket while the bunnies debated whether or not Queen Elizabeth had put lasers on her superducks. When she finally emerged to give the bunnies their pre-bed cool downs Sherlock was lying on the floor texting while the bunnies climbed over and around him devolving into Persian bickering.

Georgie was even fine tucking them into bed and kissing their foreheads squeezing them tight and being absolutely determined she was never to lose her bunnies.


	7. Chapter 7

She lasted until she got into the living room and Sherlock hit her with a quick and dirty, “My brother’s insufferable; I hardly know how I can stand him-”

He kept talking but Georgie couldn’t hear him over the sound in her head, she carefully walked around the edge of the sofa and sat down very gently. Sherlock was saying things; she knew he was complaining, it was too much for her to follow. Why was this happening? Why was this happening now? After so long, after he was nice to her? It made no sense.

“I told you I don’t want talk about Mycroft here,” she said. Or meant to say, she wasn’t quite sure she did. She needed to get up, needed to get somewhere private.

Georgie walked very carefully to her room where she very carefully closed the door before collapsing into the duvet. A weight formed like a knot in her chest, made everything heavy and horrible. Tears just appeared full force making her eyes sore and itchy already, she could feel the crying-heaviness soaking into her face.

She tried to curl her face into the pillow, as if that would make her stop crying.

“Lestrade. You’re crying Lestrade.”

“Brilliant deduction,” she ground out and then immediately felt petty and horrible afterward. “If you’re going to stand in the doorway at least, close the door behind you.”

“Lestrade,” he stood looming like some great lanky child before stepping in quickly and snicking the door shut. “Lestrade, I-”

It was horrible, it was mortifying but she couldn’t stop crying.

“I don’t understand what I said to make you cry. I didn’t say any of the common things I say to make women cry. I didn’t mention your parents or siblings, or your appearance – which is becoming increasingly alarming – or your finances, I didn’t even mention any of your roman- Oh.” He stared at Georgie which was awkward, to be observed when you’re fighting for self-control. “But you’re not even with him anymore. It’s been _years_.”

Georgie didn’t have it in her to try and explain to someone else about feelings. She didn’t want to be a mummy right now. She just wanted to be Georgie.

“Lestrade I don’t understand.”

“I doesn’t matter how long ago it was, I c-care for him,” she gasped from the bed, “I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know why I’m doing this now. Its j-just seeing him and not being able to have any part in his life, not being a part of him anymore, it’s painful for me.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Not everything in life makes perfect sense all of the time. Don’t just stand there and stare at me,” she sat up, so she was half leaning against the headboard and turned her face away.

“What am I meant to do then?” when she looked back he was absently wringing his hands.

“I don’t know; try your hand at comfort. You’re rubbish at this.”

Relief washed across his face and his shoulders eased, “Ah, I have observed comforting, I can do that.”

Which was how Georgie ended up crying herself to sleep against Sherlock expensive shirt while he quoted platitudes that sounded like the insides of very cheap sympathy cards; he really was absolute rubbish, it was like crying into a plank. It was also how she woke up with her shoes still on and her arm slung over the chest of a tightly wound and fidgeting Sherlock.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said very carefully as Georgie stirred, rubbing her face against the back of Sherlock’s coat. 

“Hmm?” she had just cried her eyes out a few hours past and she hadn’t had her arms around anyone other than her dear bunnies for six years there abouts. Not counting when Dimmock passed out on her shoulder after that nasty Worthington case. Her exhausted body wasn’t going to budge from holding someone warm and solid until she was good and ready.

“Lestrade,” he sounded pained.

“Yes Sherlock?” she sighed, her arm squeezing his narrow chest gently before pulling back. If he didn’t want to be touched she wasn’t going to touch him. The thinness bothered her though. He jumped and played all over London, he needed to eat more. If he had more food in him he’d be covered in muscle ripcord lean. Now he just had a tiny layer of stuffing over his sharpish ribs.

“I’m not equipped for this.” he said rigidly.

She pulled away, stretching, muggy with sleep. “For what?”

“I’m not interested in you sexually.” If he were any pricklier, or even a touch more awkward he would probably rigidly come apart in splinters.

She smiled at the space between his pokey shoulder blades, “That’s good, because I’m not interested in you sexually either.”

His head tilted back to peer at her, “What’s this then?”

“Cuddling, Sherlock, this is what people do when they cuddle. You’ve seen me cuddle with the bunnies before; it’s something mums do with their kids a lot. Did you really think I was coming onto you?”

He peered at her over his shoulder.

“Idiot,” she said affectionately. “When have I ever come onto you?”

“You don’t find me sexually attractive at all?”

Her eyes felt gross and scratchy so she yawned and rubbed them a little, “You have a certain appeal objectively speaking. Nice skin and pretty eyes, all that. But it would be weird, besides you’re a little young for me. Did I make you feel wrong or uncomfortable? If I did I’m very sorry,” her face creased with worry.

“No,” he rolled over abruptly, bumping his shoulder into her. “If you have no sexual interest in me why would you… cuddle with me?”

“Because of the affection that keeps perversely carrying on, despite the fact you regularly break into my flat and talk to my young impressionable children about decomposition.”

“You feel affection for me?”

Georgie gave him a strange look, “Of course I do. Why do you think I keep feeding you and letting you sleep on my couch? You’re a sweet kid, just odd, and a little morbid. I will admit to some concern. Why are we talking about this when I just woke up? What time is it even?”

He narrowed her eyes at her and she looked at him with concern, “It’s two in the morning, you can still get two more hours of sleep in, take you shoes off. We’re going to cuddle again.”

“Are we now?”

“Yes, I found it somewhat soothing. I may have slept for a few hours. Or do people only cuddle without asking?”

“No, you can ask,” she kicked off her shoes. Why not after all? She still slept better with someone in the bed.

“Excellent, I will be the one with their arm on top this time. You bruised the back of my legs with you shoes.”

“I’m sorry about that,” before she could say anything else he arranged her on her side so he could snug in behind her. She couldn’t help laughing as he shifted her arms and legs around like she was a teddy bear.

“This isn’t suitable,” he said finally.

“How did you cuddle with your mum?”

Sherlock went very still. “I didn’t.”

“Okay then, I’ll take over a bit if you don’t mind, budge over,” she rolled onto her back and tucked him into her side, got his face down into the side of her neck and tucked her arm around his shoulders. “Bailey likes to cuddle like this when she’s had bad dreams. This isn’t sexual, alright? And if you try something I will kick you out of bed.”

“I’m not,” Sherlock, breath was soft. He slowly put an arm around her middle, as if she might throw it off again, “I mean I don’t-”

“It’s alright Sherlock, whatever; I want to get my sleep in.”

“Is this-“

“Shut up Sherlock, close your eyes and at least pretend to sleep.”

He huffed in amusement against her neck, “Yes Mummy.”

***

The seduction of Mycroft Holmes had been a terrifying affair. He had never been so powerless, so wrong footed, so desperate to please. He was a man who had a position of power usually reserved for men who were twenty years his senior. He was extremely intelligent, extremely wealthy and becoming increasingly well connected, soon he would be settled into the office he wanted and be completely secure. He was not though, it seemed, prepared for Georgiana. He understood, after winning Georgiana’s favor, why the Queen of Sheba held such sway over Solomon’s Court. He took it as a personal lesson, nearly too late that had Solomon clung a little tighter to her it would have turned out better for him in the end.

Georgiana was quick, clever, not the way he was clever, but enough so that he could speak with her and thoroughly enjoy her conversation. She had a job she was good at and was confident of her proficiency. And most of all, although he had no illusions appearance was any measure of a woman, Georgiana was extraordinarily beautiful. Utterly exquisite. The sort of woman that wars were won and lost over. For all his power and influence with a woman like Georgiana he was utterly at her mercy.

He had loved a woman once, he was fourteen and she was only a few months younger. He was fat and freckly and utterly besotted. He daydreamed about her, about them, about her smile and how she would love him too. Her long soft blonde hair shimmering in the sunlight and they laughed together, spoke of things, she would understand him, he wouldn’t have to pretend to be normal, wouldn’t have to worry about slipping up. She put him into fits, into nervous retching in the toilet, into anxious ecstatic knots and when he had approached her (and he could see himself now with a mixture of mortification and pity that sweaty plump boy, so ungainly, so desperate, who didn’t fit anywhere, who was peculiar and so nervous and it makes him cringe. He had been asking for it.) she had laughed at him mockingly and he had retreated heartbroken to the toilet where he had hid for the rest of the day with the stall door locked and his feet pulled up so know no one would know he was in there.

Being unloved.

He had been heartbroken.

Mycroft had slimmed, had become successful, but he was still the same. So _different_. Not even his own baby brother could stand him. What could he would for in a woman as perfect as Georgiana?

Their meeting had been as unique as he could expect for himself, and as adventuresome as he could equate with her life despite its long hours and bad coffee. The _crumpledness_ of her life at her Yard. 

Mycroft had been startled by the sudden introduction of a man's astonished face to the window of his town car. The man was introduced so hard that Mycroft suspected had the glass not been bullet proof, there would be cracks. Then he noticed behind the man gasping like a goldfish, a woman. Her eyes were very dark and hair, which if he was being poetic (and he suddenly found he was), was the color of nightfall, a just tinged blackness. Her features had been arranged in a manner sweet and precise so that she managed to look immediately elegant, even while out of breath. She also was sporting a deep gash to her forehead and a few impressive bruises. Her chin, while of a determined cast was defiantly delicate and he found his aesthetic sensibilities abused at the idea of her being struck across the face by a man's fist. Probable cause for forcefully pinning a man to his car was obvious. The man was cuffed and slung toward a large PC who was decidedly pale in the face, and Mycroft's approval of the woman's handling increased.

Mycroft realized in the spirit of a man who suddenly found himself falling through the air when he had previously been on solid ground that he was _affected_.

He lowered the window quite before he knew what he was about. "Hello," he said. 

"Hey," she gasped, and by the way her thumbs flexed over her hip bones he knew immediately she was both unmarried and single, that she was a sergeant for Scotland Yard, that she lived alone, had fish and chips for lunch and that her trousers were new and she wasn’t used to how they had spread across her hips. She hadn’t expected to be running around today, but the nature of the man’s crimes (bombing of parks, he had unresolved issues with his Welsh foster parents that he took out on children’s parks, obvious from the paint chip under his nails, he worked in a book store and was allergic to cats) and the inexperience (or incompetence more likely) of the PCs she had given chase. This woman was devoted to her work, or more accurately to doing what was right, which was why she spent so much time and effort, so many late nights. He thought it was a very good idea not to mention he had gathered all of that from one flex of her thumbs over the edge of her pelvic bone. He was also thinking about her pelvic bone. "Bullet proof glass," she nodded at him.

Mycroft blinked at her apt observation, she was clever even for a plain clothes police officer and the response he wanted to give her was, 'I find your observational skills and your aptitude as a professional quite stimulating, in addition to your being an incredibly attractive woman. Would you like to have lunch with me, by which I mean, would you like to come to my townhouse so I could take you to bed until you forget your name?' What he said was, "Yes."

“Thank you sir,” she continued, still panting, bending down to eyelevel, her blouse was both cut and buttoned so that her cleavage didn’t show, he found this fact extremely pleasing, the modesty and the self-confidence both, “for your service to the City of London.”

Mycroft blinked at her, suddenly concerned she was somehow able to ascertain his occasional flirtation with Downing Street, “Pardon?”

“Conveniently placed car.” She nodded back at the man being dragged away, “Bomber.”

“Oh dear,” what a horrendously boorish thing to say, nothing wooed a lady like sounding like an old bookish fuddy-duddy; Mycroft kicked himself mentally, which considering the size of his brain was quite the kick. “Should I take your card, or you mine?”

“Hmm?” she said. Mycroft was _not_ going to sexualize a woman he had just met. He had control. But it wasn’t easy if she was going to hum like that.

“Men like him are notorious predictable,” his handkerchief was in his hand and pressing against her forehead before he was quite aware. The fine linen picked up a small constellation of perfect red stars, “I can testify it was probable cause.”

“Yeah, alright then,” she flicked a card out of her pocket with her left hand and Mycroft suddenly, while looking at the beauty of her wrist had a flash back to being fourteen and rejected by the woman he was convinced was the only one he would ever love. So he closed his mouth on the matter of a drink, or dinner, or a trip to Paris. He traced over the crisp G Lestrade as they drove away, leaving the lovely lady behind with her PCs and an astonished bomber.

He may have continued on that vein thinking of a beautiful sargeant in the quiet hours when he was alone except the suspect was predictable and she called him, asked him if he could come down to the station, so very politely and professionally.

“This is Sergeant Georgiana Lestrade, we met the other day-” she said and Mycroft’s brain lit up, each well-turned acre of it, sighed out _Georgiana._

She had been so professional and so had he, not at all like he had been thinking of her strong bare limbs and large dark eyes, hadn’t reimagined (and Mycroft had a talented imagination) their first meeting in which he had opened the car door and reached for her and she had come in and closed the door after her and he had rolled up the window and she had undone the top button of her blouse. He only answered her questions and afterward shook her hand and said, “Thank you Sergeant Lestrade.”

“You can call me Georgie if you like,” she said smiling, it was playful and he was so in love he was nearly sick with it. It was a gift he had been given, an allowance, and he had to control himself, remain in control, not revert to that sweaty little creature. Not be _peculiar_ and too smart.

“Georgie for Georgiana?” he said and felt a slight twitch through their joined hands, so subtle to be nearly unnoticeable, before she pulled her hand away. Mycroft suddenly disliked her dark eyes; they were so black he couldn’t tell if her pupils had dilated and if was too late for him to take her pulse. He could only assume it was not distaste. He decided to use her full name at every single available opportunity. “That seems a waste of a beautiful name.”

“Okay,” she said.

Slight panic overtook him; vague affirmations could be a sign of disinterest, “Would you be interested in a drink sometime?”

“Yeah,” she said a little breathlessly and he relaxed, he had done something right, he just needed to maintain self-control. “Yes, I’d really like that.”

If he kept moving fast enough, if he kept talking long enough and didn’t give her time to consider or think then maybe she wouldn’t really see him, would only see the suit and the stature and she wouldn’t say no. Wouldn’t turn him away. And maybe someday she would stay with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his side, would put her hand in his hand and her shoulder against his shoulder.


	8. Chapter 8

Georgie couldn’t help but blink at the massive black eye Sherlock wore to her crime scene. His left eye was nearly swollen closed, his cheek a dark and aching purple. “Sherlock what happened to your face?” she reached up toward his chin to turn his face into better light.

“Don’t fuss Mummy,” he twisted his face away like a perturbed cat and flapped his long hands at her.

_“Sherlock.”_

“Don’t fuss,” he flapped at her again. She pushed his hands away, tilting her chin with her fingertips.

“What did you do?”

“I got into a tussle with an idiot.”

“Oh really?” she put her hands on her hips and tried not to smile at the word ‘tussle.’ “Probably because you called them an idiot. You’d do well to try a little self-censoring from time to time.”

“I didn’t provoke anything,” he sniffed at her like her concern was a serious drain on his intellect. He was distracted enough being a prat for her to pull him down for closer examination. He whinged at her, but she was satisfied that he hadn’t burst anything major and shoved him away again. “You need to put ice on that when you get home.”

“My face is not made for ice packs.” True enough, his face had the whole swoopy cheekbone thing going for it.

She rolled her eyes at him, “You’re the clever one here, get creative. Grab a bag of frozen peas from your freezer, break them up a little bit inside and put it on your face. It’ll make the swelling go down.”

“Am I hear for advice on medical treatment or is there actually a murder?”

“There is,” and this was the part where she was being horrendously paranoid. “I’d like you to do something for me too. Check something is more like.”

“What?”

She led him into the dreary little warehouse that was being refitted for flats. One of the last hangers on finally being converted. The mottled dusty light came in through the windows the color of dishwater and landed with a dull surefootedness on the debris of the floor. It was a terrible little place to die, all metal scaffolding and cloudy sheets of plastic. Fragmented lines of sunlight tripping down through the windows, snagging on swarms of dust motes, the place had horror film all over it. Or maybe depressing French existential crisis. A sad place to think of someone dying: laid out and murdered in the grit. To be devalued that way. It was more a tragedy than a horror. “There was a case I worked on years ago and this… It just…” It just set her teeth on edge and she wasn’t quite sure why. There was nothing directly similar about the case she had been on, nearly seven years ago. Before Sherlock’s time. It was just something that caught in her brain. Sherlock followed her up the warehouse stairs to the second floor as she floundered for what to say “I don’t know, just look and see if the two are similar to each other, will you?”

“Sure,” he said, and seeing the police tape, descended.

“Sally!” Georgie shouted over to her sergeant who was tapped the file against her thigh while chatting with a PC. Georgie wasn’t quite sure how to talk about to Sally about her serial workplace dating, but it wasn’t going to end well. She could feel it in her bones. “Bring it over.”

“No, no,” Sherlock barked at her. “Not yet. First the crime scene and then the file.”

“Hey Freak, you can’t just boss her around like that,” Sally snapped.

Georgie gave Sally a sustained stare, the sort that got the bunnies to settle down and plucked the folder out of Sally’s hands. The DS decided to stride off in a huff, which was actually probably the best decision all around.

Sherlock for his part went on a mad orbit around the body. The poor dear dead girl was sprawled with one arm out - palm up as if pleading, Sherlock burned imperiously over her peering and poking as he went. She looked young, uni age, her face was tinged with a hesitant sort of acceptance caught halfway through, her dark eyes wide open. He rubbed the fabric of her gauzy green dress between his fingers, peered at the bottom of her flats, sniffed at the dark, sprawled halo of her hair. It bothered Georgie a little, the way that Sherlock was so clinical about it. The way he was looking at this poor girl, who had died like she was nothing more but a puzzle. If she hadn’t seen Sherlock on her sofa peering at her from under an afghan she might worry he hadn’t a heart. But that cold burning observation was what got the job done she supposed. When he was done he stood in a whoosh of coat and held out his hand for the folder. If she wasn’t so anxious she’d roll her eyes at him, but now wasn’t the time for that.

He flipped open the file, and turned it this way and that, flipping through the pages before he said, “There’s no connection.” Lestrade felt something in her gut unclench. “Your face has changed,” he asked without asking. “Why are you relieved?”

“The suspect made me feel all skeevy,” she pulled her shoulders up around her ears. “There was just something kind of wrong with him. It couldn’t be him, I know that, it was just… You’re sure though?”

“I’m always sure,” Sherlock huffed. “The technique and process was completely different and there appears to be no sort of connection between the two. The first was a native Londoner and an old woman. This girl is from France and visiting family. They’re from different socioeconomic strata have no visible physical characteristics similar. With so many differences, and the kinds of discrepancies, no connection.”

“Good,” she sighed. “I’ll have to escort you back out again.”

“All these ridiculous procedures. Solving crimes would be a lot easier if the Yard wasn’t so bullheaded about keeping me out,” he said, tagging along at her shoulder. She nodded the go ahead to one of the techs as she passed as a cue to start crime scene clean up.

“Shame on us for proper procedure,” she dropped her hands into her coat pockets.

“You said suspect?” he preeminently interrupted another lecture on procedure. He was so like a child in many ways. A teenager still trying to carve a hole for himself in the world, gawky limbs flapping around as he galloped down the stairs.

“I was fairly sure it was him. The suspect I mean. But the evidence pointed to someone traveling through. I was on the case, under Hendrickson. I don’t think you ever met my old boss actually. It was all a bit mad during that time. Turned out to be someone else entirely. There’s actually something else I wanted to ask you.” She stepped to the side of the stairs to dodge the last of the forensics team going up.

There was a brief pause, after which Sherlock sighed deeply and rolled his eyes. “Are you going to ask the question?”

“That thing back there I was employing, that’s what is commonly referred to as manners. You were a smart kid, right?”

“Is stating the obvious part of manners too?”

Georgie smacked him in the side and he winced. “You alright?”

“Like I said before, I had a tussle with an idiot. Yes, I believe the technical term is genius.”

Georgie looked away and pretended valiantly she wasn’t blushing, “Well the bunnies will be old enough for primary school next year and I just wanted to ask… I mean if it’s no trouble, what helped you at school?”

“Well, I went to a public school,” Sherlock said carefully.

Georgie kicked the edge of her sensible shoe in the dust, “I don’t know if I can afford one. Not to start off. Although I want to get them in for secondary. They’re smart, public school would be the best, but I can’t… just can’t afford it. My salary is too high for most bursaries. But it’s still too little for a London school. Not unless I send them off, which I can’t. Or move to a cheaper flat.” 

Sherlock frowned at her, “But your flat’s convenient. You’ve been saving up?”

“Yeah, of course. I don’t really want to get into finances,” she shifted uncomfortably. “I just know you have a hard time now. With what you say going over people’s head’s. I’m sure school wasn’t always easy for you, so I was wondering if you could give me any advice on what I could do to make it easier for them.”

He stared at her for what felt like a full minute. “Me?”

“You’re the smartest person I know. That I can go to at least,” she amended. Mycroft would likely be horrified if she showed up asking for this sort of thing. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I can google. I’m pretty good at googling.”

“No. No. It’s fine. Whatever you want Mummy.”

Georgie shifted again. This was a very nerve wracking situation, “You probably shouldn’t call me that on scene.”

Sherlock’s face froze up.

“Call me whatever you want outside of work. But I want you to be taken seriously, skinny mad git that you are. That means you have to stay professional. It’ll make you more credible. Make it easier for you to do the work.” She had heard all about The Work. He could get himself into a right religious fervour about it. “If you’ve got nothing on,” she said. “We could talk over lunch?”

“You don’t have your wallet on you. In an effort to avoid being pickpocketed again.”

“You’re not going to pay for lunch?” she strolled out into the normal, bright, living air. Her lungs opened as if her throat had closed without her noticing in defense against the dust, bring in a burst of beautiful air. As beautiful as the air in London got. “You’re a horrible son.”

He snorted, a pleased little sound she didn’t hear enough of and fell into step with her.

\---

“Where are the bunnies?” Sherlock peered around the flat a few days later, showing up randomly as he always did, although she was starting to catch some warning signs.

“They’re with Phil this week, it’s his summer holiday now, give them a chance to run around in the country air. It’ll give me a chance to get their room repainted too,” and a chance for her to think on the murder of that poor young girl. Sherlock had declared the killing boring, a chance meeting gone wrong and had swanned off to work a private case involving a stolen will and missing beneficiaries. 

“Boring,” he wandered into the kitchen and emerged again with a bucket of ice cream and a spoon before landing next to her on the sofa.

“That’s mine you know.”

“Not anymore,” he peeled the lid off and stuck the spoon in directly.

Georgie rolled her eyes and flicked his ear. “How’s the will thing going?”

“Waiting for the solicitor, it’s hateful.”

“Of course,” she picked at the end of the painter’s tape, it had gone all soft and melted into everything else so it was near impossible to peel up, the case was giving her the shiver shakes again. Just like the one before, there was just something about that body. The way she was laid out. She kept getting close to leads and missing them. Everything just slipping out of her grasp. Eventually she had to let it go, like other cases she had to get cold, it was just a matter of swallowing the anguish. Of explaining to herself that even though she was supposed to keep them safe, the people of London, she had failed them. The case was fobbed off and Georgie would deal with other matters.

She couldn’t understand that about Sherlock, how he could waltz on, eating her ice cream experimenting (which was Sherlockian for playing Greeks and Persians) with her bunnies. Eating at their table. Being a part of human life and not caring sometimes that someone somewhere had lost a daughter, lost a mother, lost an uncle and they would never know. Not when he could solve it so easily, how he could one moment shrug the case off as boring and the next curl up on her sofa like it was his own little hidey hole and swallow down her ice cream.

She didn’t really know him that well when it came down to it. She knew the sort of things he did, and the strange things he got into, but she didn’t know why. Couldn’t guess him or anticipate. He and his brother didn’t know if she could know them at all.

\---

Things might have continued forever as they were in their own little equilibrium, eventually curling toward a sort of pleasant association, if not for Georgie. Lestrade would always, in any universe, in any world, be a soft, comfortable, well-worn creature; brave, kind, deeply loyal. She would always fight to save those she loved, fight for her children so they would feel the acceptance and love of two parents, that their extraordinary minds were beautiful. She would fight for herself, for her good work, for what she did for the Yard and for London. She fought for Sherlock, her third child, great and mad edged, whirling endlessly with no foundation. And in her heart she fought for Mycroft Holmes, for him and against him in a corner of her heart where she had accepted now that he always would remain even if that romance was long since over. Because she was fighting, because she was brave she was climbing the stairs to a flat on Montague Street with a cold case ( _the_ cold case) in hand as well as a couple others. It was a bit like whipping a dead horse, but she couldn’t leave it. She heard two voices arguing through the door to Sherlock’s door.

“You’re just jealous because Mummy likes _me_ more,” Sherlock snapped full of dangerous immature fury that didn’t know what it could do, the bruising on his face burning against the china of his rage whitened skin.

From her place in the doorway she watched as Mycroft went pale, jerked his head back like he had been hit. His mouth was flat and helplessly closed, too well trained to gape and Sherlock’s hateful little scowl and Georgie hated that. Hated the helplessness in Mycroft and rose immediately to defend him. Georgie didn’t know a lot about life growing up in the Holmes household, other than they hadn’t been particularly spoiled by affection from their mother. It wasn’t _done_ to hold that over each other.

“Sherlock Holmes,” she barked at ‘I’m the commanding officer at this riot’ volume. It was a loud sound; it filled the little chemical stained parlour and hollowed out all the other angry biting rages that had been sniping there like rats out of a burning building. Both Holmes brothers stared at her wide eyed, like concussed turtles, and Mycroft was hurt and would be furious, but right now he was too shocked. It was her understanding that no one dare yell at a Holmes but a Holmes. Good this would be a learning experience for them. “You apologize to your brother right now or so help me you do not want to know what I will do.”

“What?” Sherlock said in a small shocked sort of voice. He sounded like a child, but this was not acceptable. 

“You apologize. You don’t try to hurt people like that,” she was up in his face pointing, demanding his attention.

“I _want_ to hurt him,” Sherlock snarled, so sure of himself again.

Georgie smacked him on his clavicle, not that hard, not as hard as she could have but the sound snapped down on the flat and held the boys in obedience for a moment. Sherlock looked away, at the wall, face slack in something small and child sized. “You do not try and hurt people like that. Not when they love you. Not when they worry about you every day.”

“He doesn’t,” Sherlock said, twisted up in knots of razor wire, but she wasn’t letting him go, she wasn’t letting go of him, his fingers curled around his shoulder. “Not anymore, he doesn’t. He wants to send me away. I don’t want to go away. I have used in ages, and only because I was so _bored_ but I’m not. I’m not using and I haven’t done anything wrong!” he shouted the last part at Mycroft, which was farther away from hysteria then screaming was. Thank heaven for small measures.

She could see why he was upset, why this would seem like a rejection of the progress he had made so far.

“Just because he ruined his life doesn’t mean I should let him ruin mine!”

And that was enough from Sherlock’s corner.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah, time for you to go.”

“What?” he barked, face still twisted up.

“You need to go and have a walk around for a while, whatever you want, eat something for once maybe. Just get out,” she was not wearing her reasonable face she was wearing her _there is no end to the irritation I am currently feeling_ face.

“You can’t kick me out of my own flat!” Sherlock barked at her, he was angry and frustrated, but she needed him to go.

“I’m doing it right now,” she pointed to the door. “Out!”

“But-” Sherlock started.

“I am upset. I am very, very upset. Do not test me currently.”

He _slammed_ out of the room and _slammed_ down the hall and into the stairs. Georgie pinched the bridge of her nose very hard, which didn’t really help, but it gave her something to focus on besides kicking in the heads of people named Holmes. When she turned around Mycroft Holmes was so composed that she might as well be trying to talk to an exceptionally well-dressed wall. His face was so blank that he wasn’t even that attractive, which was an epic accomplishment.

“Oh stop it,” she said, not carrying that her anger made her sloppy and coarse toned, no one was pretty when they were angry. Not when they were really angry. Except maybe Sherlock who was just weirdly attractive. “Take that off right now, I actually want to talk to you, not just talk at you while you recite Greek poetry in your head.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Okay, so you’re smart. You know I’ve got a soft spot for Sherlock. And I’m not going to be an idiot and say I don’t want to pick sides. That I don’t have favourites, because everyone’s got favourites and both of us know that. But you’re not making life any easier for yourself by making stupid panicky moves. You’d never _do_ anything you would know would piss Sherlock off so much, not unless you were afraid of something. But to push like this, so fast is ridiculous and you’re better than this. So tell me why you’re doing this,” she looked at him, imploring. Trying to get all the imploring she could get into the look.

He did nothing, just stood there.

“You know he’s not a proper addict! Not like that,” she waved an arm at him, pacing. “He only does it when he’s properly bored. You know if you don’t want him to use you have to keep him here, close, in London. Where he feels safe, where there’s enough crime to keep his mind from doing whatever it does. He cares about what you think Mycroft, he really honestly does. You can’t send someone away who cares about you and not expect their heart to ache a little. Although,” she allowed, “Sherlock is really not at all like most people.”

“I’m not sure what you expect me to say to your little … tirade,” Mycroft managed to make it sound like she had taken one of the greatest liberties in recorded history and was perhaps some sort of street vermin. Lestrade had spoken with the press so the tone didn’t bother her much.

“I can’t do this, Mycroft, by myself. I’ve already got two children of my own and have a hard time enough of it. I hardly know what’s going on in that boy’s head, last week he jumped into the Thames to see the likelihood of catching _pneumonia_ Just, please, I can’t take care of him, he needs to learn how to be a good man by himself.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing? _Taking care_ of him,” he managed to make it sound so salacious she blushed a little on principle.

“What are you on about?” she looked at him.

“I’m fully aware of all the… kindness you’ve been showering on him,” he sneered at her, suddenly cabling was laid out between the bits of her brain and things started to make sense.

“Did you think we were shagging?” Georgie gaped at him.

“You slept together,” he threw back.

“At the risk of sounding like a bad bit of telly, _slept_ is in fact the key word there,” she gave him a bit of a disbelieving look. It’s bad enough with you, I can happily skip feeling like a bit of a dirty old woman thank you, besides the fact he’s a bit mad and likes to play with bits of bodies he’d probably get bored halfway through and wander off.”

“I’m not that much younger than you,” Mycroft said, he had a funny look about him, mostly imperious, that Georgie didn’t know.

“Yeah, but…” Georgie made comparative hand motions. “Wait, are you sending him away because you thought I was _corrupting your brother?”_ He got as far as opening his mouth when Georgie read it all over him. “You are! Mycroft Holmes, I cannot believe you.”

“You think I’m attractive?” Mycroft asked, more in the way he asked just to be polite, out of habit, because everyone was so much duller than he was. He was putting the pieces of her together before she could defend herself. “You currently think that I’m attractive, and have evaluated me as a sexual partner. Recently. An interesting train of thought for someone married to her Work.”

Then he was in her space and his hand was in her hair and she probably lost a few bobbie (irony of ironies) pins as a result, she was forever losing them. Somewhere there was a womble with a bobbie pin palace. And his other hand, it hovered, his lovely, lovely fingertips hovering at the juncture of her jaw and drawing slowly, with only a hint of a short, blunt man’s nail, so that she was lost in sensation. While she was letting out short gasping little breaths that she kept meaning to stop making, but she didn’t have to because he was kissing her. Swallowing the sound and instead of a workaholic mother she felt like a character out of some smutty novel, collapsing into the force of Mycroft’s gravity. Slinging one arm around his neck and clinging with all the strength in her thoroughly working class fingers to the fine blue of his probably hand stitched suit. Felt posh enough.

His hands were wandering, his nails pulling down the mostly-silk of her blouse, down her side and he pulled back to growl at her through his teeth and she panted against his mouth, overwhelmed by the impossibility. “Yes,” he said and bit at her mouth and clung to her body with both hands in a way that didn’t even give her time to be embarrassed. Then she was bracing herself as she was slammed up against the wall. The way he was staring her down, no more distance apart than the hairbreadth it took to focus on her face, he might has well have been branding _mine_ on her. Normally the whole possessive thing didn’t do her a thing as far as blokes go. But apparently Mycroft wanting her, not wanting to let her go was all she needed to be full systems go.

“Love me,” he commanded, as only Mycroft could, from where he was leaving precision bruising with his teeth on her jaw. “Love me now,” he demanded. “Love me more than him.”

“I do,” she said, because of course. “Of course. Who?”

“The father, their father, the one that left you. Love me more than him, don’t you want to?” he did something with his hands on her hips that had her speaking in tongues.

“Always,” she said before she realized who Mycroft was cursing at in French as he abandoned her jaw for her throat. “Alw-,” she stopped, thought about what she was about to say and had a small panic attack. “Let me down, let me down!”

As he was a bit distracted she chopped down on his shoulders which made him jump and half drop her, she took care of the rest, had wobbly legs and nearly fell on her face before running all the way home for fear she had given too much away.

Of course she had, this was Mycroft Holmes.

Even brave people knew when to cut and run.


	9. Chapter 9

Georgie called Phil as soon as she got home and asked after her bunnies.

“Hey babe,” he said affectionately, sounding calm, happy, not at all like a man who’d had an ominous black car show up and secret away his niece and nephew. “How are you?”

She could picture him; black hair smoothed back, big black-rimmed old man glasses standing in the kitchen of his little house. She pictured it in her mind with the bunnies nearby, their auburn heads bent together. “Fine, where are the bunnies?”

“They’re safe, they’re good. I’m looking at them right now. I swear, they are crazy smart, they’ve learned more French the week they’ve been here than my first summer over slaving for granmere. I took them out to look do the whole nature walk thing. Do you know they speak in tongues to each other?”

“Persian,” she sighed in relief.

“You having trouble babe?” now he sounded worried, she could picture the crease between his eyebrows.

“No, no it’s nothing, doesn’t sound like.”

“Don’t be a brat,” she said, which was not what she had meant to say, but she was in the habit of self-editing.

“You called me, babe. The kids are fine, anxious to see you tomorrow. They probably won’t sleep tonight, so thank you for that too. You could probably back off being so awesome just a little bit. Make them a little less excited to see you. And now they’re perking up. Do you want to talk to them?

“Ye-” she started before there was a forcefully polite knock at her door; it had layers of forceful politeness. Only one person she knew could put so much eloquence into a knock. “No,” she corrected. “No, now isn’t a good time. Maybe later today. Definitely tomorrow morning.”

“Can I do something to help you babe? Because now I’m going to worry, and call Vicki and Vicki is going to call mum and then mum is going to call Dimmock and then Dimmock is going to call all the king’s men-”

“In this case it may actually be ineffectual,” she muttered.

“Seriously? Has your baby daddy the King of Persia decided to show up to shower you with gifts and tigers? Actually probably not shower you with tigers. That sounds kind of dangerous and painfully.”

There was another knock, more eloquently annoyed than the last.

“I’ve really got to go, keep the bunnies in today love.”

She hung up on the faint sound of Phil calling _”Georgie,”_ down the phone line. After a deep breath she walked to her front door, head held high and opened it to the face of Mycroft Holmes. It was a face that was so much muchness that there were no words to describe it. It was as if someone had taken all the skies and put them on his face so that storms that made you think the world was ending were cohabitating with parching, burning hot glass skies where even the sun sizzled painfully and gentle showers tumbled with everyday drizzles and clear default robin’s blue shoved next to the bleak scrape of ice heavy sky. It was all of that on a single face. Or it could have been all the oceans, or all the roads, or all anything. It was too much to understand or parce. 

It was just a muchly face. 

“They’re my children,” Mycroft said as soon as she opened the door. “They’re my children and you love me.”

There wasn’t really anything she could say to that, they both knew it was true. If it had been anything else she could probably say something else, but it had been a truth roosting in the arch of her mouth for ages, she couldn’t refuse or deny it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he tried to step into her house, but she stopped him with a solid hand to his chest.

“Don’t go all wounded monarch on me. You’re the one that said you didn’t want me, didn’t want us. You have no right.”

“I never said I didn’t want you,” he hissed at her with his muchly face.

“What with your carrying on about how I was _casual_ , how we weren’t even dating. Do you think I was thrilled to be called your bit of rough on the side, your… I don’t even know. Because men who have mistresses are dating their mistresses. Because the question must be asked if you didn’t think we were dating and we were having sex, what did you think we were doing? I know one answer to that question, and it is not a happy answer.”

Mycroft’s face went from muchly to white. She had seen that happen to plenty of faces, usually before someone threw up or when they found out someone was dead. 

“So what was I supposed to think about the fact that I was fairly sure we were having sex at least twice a week and you said casual. And then off you went here and gone again after telling me I meant nothing to you and you expected me to say what?” she choked off before she could say _I love you, marry me, be with me forever._ It would hurt her more to have to say it, those words she had hidden under her tongue waiting for him that night, than it would hurt him to hear it.

“I- I didn’t. That’s not what I meant at all.”

“Really, please do tell,” she nearly snarled at him. It was better than weeping.

“It wasn’t some quick stop. I had to beg to see you, to get the chance to explain to you… To tell you I was going. I only was given the option of stopping to tell one person. I chose you Georgiana-”

“You didn’t. _You didn’t,_ ” she pushed against his heart with her open palm.

“I didn’t even stop to visit my mother before I left. I only stopped for you.”

“You don’t even _like_ your mother.”

“But I do love her. And I am a man of duty; you know that, a man of propriety.” He looked at her, wane and hunted and reached for her.

She flinched from him; she had never flinched back from any man before. It made her feel strange and a little weak. She didn’t like the feeling. Mycroft’s face went as hard as iron and Georgie wanted to hit him, but she knew that when someone started taking swings at someone they loved it never ended well. No matter how impossible they were. 

_“No,”_ she said, desperate not to be afraid. “You have no right. _You’re_ the one who said those things. You’re the one who was awful and you have no right to complain about how lonely _you_ were swanning about the world, being clever and sighing poetically over what might have been over champagne and caviar and the staid and proper applause of your employers who now all work for you I don’t doubt and not sure how they got there. And you have no right because you could have said something, you could have said something then, on that night, you could have said something the day after. Any time after any of the weeks or months or days or years. Any of that would have been better than randomly appearing in my life, demanding my love and then,” she waved her hand at him, “whatever it is you’re doing.”

 _”You would have hated me!”_ he shouts and slams the door closed behind her.

“I what?” she doesn’t shout back, not because she can’t or won’t, but because she doesn’t feel it’s necessary right now.

He looks angry and dangerous; in general, not to her. She’s not afraid now, because she knows him and knows what’s wrong now even though she has no idea what he’s on about. She cannot conceive of a world in which she might hate Mycroft Holmes. Even if he killed all the kittens in Eurasia, she’d just be terribly sad and confused, which is probably indicative, more the idiot her.

“Look at you,” he gestures at her, nearly contemptuously, but long exposure, even so long ago has taught her that there is a thin but present line between contempt and resolved acceptance. “You’re like secrets, you’re like midnight when no one else is awake but you and the soft fuzzy lights so far away they could be anything. You’re like vengeance and men, powerful men they love secrets, and they love peace and they love vengeance. Everything a man might want you embody. If I begged you, if I asked you to wait for me you would as par for course for your absurd sense of honesty and fidelity and others would come for you as I knew they would and they would tempt you and adore you and still you would cling to your word and every little thing that endeared you to me would fade away and you would hate me.

“I know what I am,” he motioned at her as if she were him, as if he weren’t talking nonsense. “I know what I’m like, cold, and smarter than everyone. Hard and irritable. I am not a man beloved.”

“You are an idiot, I would have waited.”

“You-”

“I waited for you anyway. I would have kept waiting for you decades more. Maybe until I died,” Georgie said.

“I-”

“Goodness knows you don’t deserve it. But lucky for you that’s not how it works,” she scowled at him, hands on her hips. “And so I’m sorry that’s what you think of me, but your argument holds no merit.”

He took a long step forward and ceased the lapel of her blazer, “I thought you had, I thought you loved someone else. It made me a bit mad Georgiana. I was going to find him,” he said softly to her, sounding like something that would give a PC nightmares. “I _fantasized_ about what I would do to him.”

“You thought menacing the man I loved would endear me to you?”

“No, I had accepted you esteemed him so that nothing could dissuade your affection,” his eyes went dark and fierce. “It would have been entirely for my benefit.”

“What am I going to do with you Mycroft?”

He looped her curls in his fingers, drawing himself closer to her, tangling himself closer to her. His eyes were so dark and fierce. How was she meant to deal with a man like him, she lopped her fingers into the front pockets of his vest and held tight

They fought each other then, for reassurance, tumbling, rolling and grabbing at each other. Mycroft needed to know he couldn’t hurt her on accident. Even though he could, of course he could, that was something that the Holmes brothers didn’t get about loving other people. Georgie needed to squeeze and hold and assure herself that he was in fact there and she wasn’t having another useless dream. At the end of it they lay side by side on the floor, having tumbled over each other gently enough that they likely hadn’t even left a bruise on the other. They panted for a while and then Mycroft begun to tremble, slowly, steadily like incoming waves, he slowly curled his long limbs toward her like a shrinking, dying, suffering thing. His head curled on her chest, his hand on her stomach. 

“I don’t know how to fix this Georgiana. This is the most important thing to ever happen to me and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Georgie lay there a long time with her arm around his still shoulders. 

\----

Mycroft rubbed gently with his fingertips down the perfect curve at the edge of her back, the muscles of her back under her mother softness and the effects of a desk job. His fingertips circled down to the dip which led him to the feminine slope of the small of her back, disingenuously vulnerable. It was a curvature made for teeth and worship. She shifted her hips for him drowsily so that if he didn’t know her so well, hadn’t memorized her so well he’d think she was still in still and heavy sleep. They had collapsed into each other after whatever that had been, bitterness he had been forced to swallow as she stood there. He had wanted to affect her, wanted to pry his fingers into her, find some hairline fissure in her ribcage to get his nails into and crack her open. Make her bow to him somehow. But she never did. Mycroft bore the sick certainty that he was not in fact good enough for Georgiana Lestrade, that he had never been and for all his titles and power that he was ultimately a man, just a superior version of one. But he wasn’t _good_ , never _good_. He was no prince charming, or hero on a white stead. All of the virtues he was meant to exemplify he and his associates laughed at over truly exorbitant whisky Georgiana softly exemplified in shades of greyscale.

How exactly then he was meant to keep her when he couldn’t trust himself to avoid her contempt, her displeasure; when everyone of his potential steps was a moral minefield. Mycroft dipped his finger along the curve of her back like a drugged man. Like a man mad with obsession. He had perhaps said too much last night, but he was getting nowhere being person wise and intention clever. Better than anyone at arranging the world, but this, lying on the cheap carpeting in the Lestrade family flat, he wasn’t sure what it was he was meant to do.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” Georgiana said suddenly with her eyes closed. Of course, of course not.

She slowly shifted her shoulders back and forth on the floor and he knew immediately where all the knots on her back were. Surely that was a lovely trick, to know her musculature from the way she moved? Georgiana sighed, just coming awake and he realized he had curled one knee over hers. 

He didn’t move his knee.

Her fingers lifted and awkwardly looped with his hand hovering above the salt and pepper cloud of her hair. He wasn’t sure how those two things went together. That she didn’t forgive him and their fingers just barely intertwined. He pressed his nose behind her ear and smelled her shampoo and her sweat, bad coffee, paper, other people and cheap copy machine toner. Also the smell of children and of iron. He clenched his hand where it rested against the small of her back.

“I don’t know if I’m expected to forgive you this quickly anyway.”

“I don’t care about that much,” he lied, but only if he was allowed to continue touching her. He liked it, the warmth of her skin through the cotton. Her hips were wider than before. He liked that about her too, that even her pelvic bone was subject to change on the subject of love.

“I’m not going to have sex with you.”

_Right now or ever?_

“At least until this whole thing is settled.”

“That won’t be a problem,” he assured her, “although I will be sleeping in your bed once a month at my leisure.”

“Will you?”

“Don’t test me Georgiana,” he snarled to the space behind her ear. “I have been very long without you, my fault, not important. I have need of your bed once a month and my children need to get used to my face.”

“Hmm,” she said softly and closed her eyes at him.

It was frustrating.

“I want to say no, but I think it would be a bit like cutting off my nose to spite my face,” she turned her head then, and almost pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. If she had the embargo would have been ruined, no matter how he would have felt about it later. He was too superior and selfish in nature to deny himself something he wanted so very badly. “It’s probably not normal.”

“We’ve already established you love me,” he didn’t know if that would be enough. And this is why he feared his brother suddenly discovering that he had an interest for things other than solving crimes and playing with dead things. Because where Mycroft was languid and ponderous Sherlock would have seized her like a desperate child and demanded ownership of her. Mycroft wouldn’t do that, he couldn’t that. 

“I’ll make you lunch,” she said. “I’m not expected until this evening.”

“It’s rather closer to supper,” he sighed, angry and disappointed at everything.

“Lupper then,” she said companionably, “Or probably tea, yes, tea,” and extracted herself with easy liquid grace. He wasn’t very well going to lie on the floor without her there so retired briefly to her bathroom to straighten himself.

“The twins aren’t even home,” she said when he returned to sit at her kitchen table; she swept her hand over her face. Old familiar gestures. “They’re coming in on the train at five tomorrow morning, down from Yorkshire. I don’t envy Phil.”

He thought of mentioning that there were things the two of them needed to start talking about, about the twins, but now wasn’t the time. He deconstructed her instead, starting with the shampoo, cheaper than the kind she had used before, wasn’t as good for her hair and she couldn’t always use her straightener with it. She tied her hair back more and more to keep the curls from running wild and to give her a more professional appearance. He continued to her makeup, her cardigan, her shoulders, her back (although knowing where her knots were helped with that, which could perhaps be called cheating),and down her body, the steady, sturdy, seductive step of her feet with their purple nail polish (where had her shoes gone?) and the movement of her fingers.

In that he read she wanted to send their children to public school, but was concerned about costs, that she allowed the children to dress themselves and did her hair and makeup before breakfast. That men’s sensual regard made her feel deeply uncomfortable. That the twins still liked to be carried and she still liked to indulge them. That she had just talked to (that encroaching, hateful, intolerable) Dimmock this morning. That there was a case at work that was bothering her. And more on and on and on. 

“I like it better when you do that,” Georgiana told him. “Sherlock makes me want to clam up tight when he does that. He just rakes you over with his fingernails. It’s poetic when you do it. Pretty.”

“Pretty?” he raised an eyebrow at her.

She smiled as she set his plate in front of him. “Profound? Perspicacious?”

He quirked his lip at her. It was very possible he could not adore her, or want her, require her any more than he did at that moment with alliteration tripping over the tip of her soft pink tongue. Her secret smile like the center of a peony. Her dark, warm eyes. She said she hadn’t forgiven him, but he had begun to poison her already.

The mother of his children. 

Let him sing the song of his well-beloved.

“I don’t know what to do when you look at me like that,” she said. 

“I don’t know how to not look at you like this,” he told her.

“I didn’t actually make any tea; I can if you want it.”

He looked down to put his napkin in his lap and adjust his silverware with his fingertips. “This is fine. I’m required at the office anyway late this afternoon. You can talk about the children.”

She paused for a moment, “If you try to take-” she stared, but had no need to finish the sentence. If he took her children from her neither they nor she would ever forgive him for it. He had enough family that hated him already.

“I have no intention,” he said, cutting into his chicken. She put her hand on his shoulders and all these years later he still instinctively tilted his cheek up for her to kiss. They both stumbled at that and he had to put down his cutlery and looked away while she sat across from him. Listened to her shifting in place and the clink of her plate.

“You sigh like Bennet, he sounds exactly the same. Except he usually does it as a sign of mournful suffering at the misfortune of the world. And as emotional blackmail for cuddles. Mycroft found this slightly intriguing, and annoying, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the fact he was a father yet. “How can you look at me like that?” she asked him.

“Like what?”

“Like there aren’t words in the English language for what you want to do with me.”

Mycroft was quiet, he watched her face and listened to her refrigerator, the barely there hum of electric lights, the sound of their breathing in the small kitchen.

“There aren’t words,” he said.

He looked down at his chicken, cutting it into tiny pieces.

She breathed out gently and started talking.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long. I haven't been very well health wise and I had a lot on my plate. Hopefully the chapter will have been worth the wait. :)

Georgie had been putting the plates in the sink for later washing when her mobile rang. What should have been the first sign something was wrong was Mycroft discretely reaching into his inside suit pocket half a second later and checking a sleek dark sliver of a phone. He excused himself with a quick nod while she answered, “Lestrade residence.”

“Georgie,” said the gasping voice of Phil, she was his older sister, she knew when he was about to cry. “Georgie, the kids.”

“What happened?” there was a huge heavy weight in her belly like some stone egg filled with wormwood. “What happened? Where are my bunnies?”

Mycroft was behind her, bracing her even though she wasn’t swaying, she was keeping down the horror and the bile, the thousand things that could have happened. Bomb on the train, car accident, snake bite, it could be anything.

“They were kidnapped, I’ve got a PC with me wanting to,” there was the muffled sound of voices in the background and a vicious blue streak of French obscenities some of which Georgie didn’t even know. Mycroft was warm and thrumming against her back with barely suppressed intelligence. “I’m trying to talk to my sister thank you.” Suddenly his voice was clear again, “I think the world is populated with bumbling barely developed plebeians.”

“Where? Tell me now.”

“Train station, I should have-”

Part of her wanted to scream at him that _yes_ this was his fault. _Yes, yes. Why_ wasn’t he watching her bunnies. That was just madness though. He still sounded like he was about to cry. Georgie didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do when Mycroft slipped her phone from her fingers and spoke to her brother. She tuned back in when his mouth tightened into a narrow line and he said, “Yes I am.” As if to say, _if you make something of it I will make you disappear so fast your shadow won’t be able to keep up._ “It will be taken care of.”

He rung off, face pulled tight around the corners just looking at her. There were a few beats of silence and her phone rang again

She watched hit the ignore button numbly. “I’ve already dispatched a team to locate and take care of the problem. Whoever this was slipped security measures, so they have some measure of intelligence.”

“What?” she said dumbly.

“The call I left to answer, it was my assistant.” This was a sign, she noted absently, that Mycroft actually did care about her. He stalked people with abandon, but he never bothered explaining anything. He didn’t like to waste time on explaining. That’s what office assistants were for.

“You had my bunnies watched?” it came out not accusing as it might have but slightly confused.

There was that was well, she would of thought they would hardly be of interest.

“They have your eyes.” 

Her mobile suddenly rang again and she reached for it.

Mycroft held it up out of the way, “It’ll be a constable with the same information.”

She reached again but he had answered, she swung a punch at his shoulder which he quickly caught and used some sort of ninja move to spin her around and held her with a steel grip, her wrist gripped and held again her hip. Mycroft spoke with an urgency that was both calm and fervent and seemed designed to get the constable off the phone as quickly as possible. She stomped down with her heel on his foot, but he quickly side stepped. She panted, hysteric anger quickly dissipating, and almost collapsed to the floor. Mycroft’s voice didn’t even falter as he caught her and held her tight against him, rubbed his thumb gently against her wrist. Then the call was over and his arms were around her holding her up and he was talking her down from a panic attack.

“Georgiana, Georgiana,” he breathed into her hair. “It will be alright.”

“The first, the first 24 hours are the most important in a kidnapping case,” she said weakly, calming herself down. Trying to calm herself down.

“I know,” there was an odd respectful tone to his voice that nearly did her in. “Don’t be scared Georgiana. It will be alright.”

“You can’t promise that,” she whispered, bent around her stomach with her ex-lover at her back keeping her upright. “You’re not God.”

“I know,” he said in that strange respectful voice of his again. “But I’m the closest thing you’ve got.”

“What will you do then?”

“I have informed my people of the need to find your children. Our children. It’s odd to think about us sharing something so important,” his breath was soft against the back of her neck.

“You really had my children watched? Before you knew?”

“Do you really think I could let anything that looked like you go undefended?”

There was a moment of loaded silence.

“Does that mean you’ve had a security detail on me too?”

Mycroft was very tellingly silent on that point. “The first thing I need to do is go to your office. You will be placed in a car and driven to a safe house.”

“No,” she said instantly.

“This is not an attack on me. If it were I would have already received ransom demands. The longer they hold the children the greater the risk as I would be able to find out who they are and rip them apart. The greatest chance of survival would be early notification. It has been too long for that. This is an attack against you. The individual was intelligent. They know how to hurt you; they want to hurt you, draw you out. Kill you. I will not lose you, you must trust me. They planned this. I need to see why they waited, why they attacked you now.”

Georgie slowly stood up, turned in his arms, “Mycroft, I’m not losing them. I’m coming with you.”

His face went hard and cold.

“I’ve done kidnapping cases before. I can keep a cool head.”

“Did you listen to _nothing_ I just said?”

“Let me take the lead on this,” she told him.

“Absolutely not, I have the resources and-”

She interrupted, which was not a done thing, if Queen Victoria herself in all her imperial splendor were still alive _she_ wouldn’t interrupt him. But Georgie Lestrade _would not have this_. Would not be cut out. They were her children and people who loved each other were meant to protect each other. “You’ll kill whoever has done this because you’re overpowering and possessive and then you’ll have to deal with that.”

“I don’t mind dealing with that.”

“Because you’ve beaten your conscience into submission. If I had to live in your head all the time I’d be scared of you too.”

“I rather wish,” he grumbled. Well, Mycroft-grumbled, not regular person grumbled.

“Let me lead on this. It will make it better for you.”

He looked at her long and hard, flexing his hand against hers covering his heart. “I reserve the right to step in.”

“If you really, really, honestly feel the need to go shadow government then that’s fine. But not on a kidnapping. Not even if I really want you to, life is not like an action movie where you get to move in and shoot all the bad guys and it doesn’t do anything to you. Unnecessary death is like a poison.”

Mycroft was silent for a short while. “If it would make you happy.”

“Don’t,” Georgie said, running her thumb along his cheek bones. “Don’t. You are something beautiful and different and extraordinary, like chocolate and gingerbread and the heat of the sun so that it boils in your bones and like a blizzard. You are everything magnificent and glorious. You are _mine_ Mycroft, for all the idiot you are and blind to how much you are adored. You’re not allowed to poison yourself like that, do you understand?”

She wasn’t sure Mycroft knew his hand sprawled over her hip was leaving a bruise and she wanted to leave a mark as well. Bite a love knot into his wrist or his neck, or against his shoulder, but now was not the time. “I will not do anything to destroy the thing you think I am,” he said simply, as gently and tenderly as if she were a child. “And I will not allow anything made from a part of you to be destroyed. They have your perfect eyes and you’ve fixed them somehow, so they aren’t like me. You can’t fix me Georgiana, you know that right? You won’t be able to change the wrong thing in me, only make it want you. I will try, for you, but you absolutely must not put yourself in harm’s way because I will destroy anything I must, myself, this country, the whole world to see you alive, and know you breathe and are safe. Please, please do not make me do something that will make you fear me.” He closed his eyes, his forehead pressed against her forehead. She could feel the maddening brush of the tips of his eyelashes.

“Let me do something,” she whispered. “I’ll go mad if you don’t.”

“Alright,” he nodded against her, “alright.”

***

Mycroft’s driver never even slowed, every stop light shining green. They came to a stop smoothly in front of the Yard and Mycroft caught her by her upper arm, keeping her close. She didn’t resist. In the elevator she turned her head and kissed the corner of his mouth. When he blinked at her in confusion, startled out of his headspace, she just shrugged at him.

“I’m going to be horrible at this,” he said. They both knew he meant their family thing. She shrugged again and then only had to work at keeping up with his long legs. People were staring at them, she didn’t care. She already knew he was going to be horrible at minding children that he would be cold sometimes because he didn’t know what to do with them that he would retreat and advance. That he’d be too formal sometimes.

“You’re not allowed to leave just because you don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll figure out what to do,” he said dismissively as they moved around each other into the door of her office which he closed after them. He always made her feel graceful, moving with her like that.

“You’re not allowed to leave because you think you’ll make me miserable.”

He looked up at her for a second as he circled her desk, eyebrow up and _her bunnies, someone took her bunnies…_ Georgie tried to pretend like she could be professional, like this wasn’t bothering her so much she couldn’t do her job, but she kept taking in quick horrible breaths like she was trying not to sob. This was possibly because she was trying not to sob. She sat down and put her head between her knees. Nothing’s happened yet. It’s too soon. She heard the slip of her files on her desk and finally looked up at him.

“I _will_ make you miserable,” he said and then threw her one of the nicotine patches she kept in her bottom left hand drawer. And then she was away from her panic and here with Mycroft again.

She shrugged a tight half hysterical twitch of her shoulders as she rolled up her sleeve. “Probably, but you know when I need nicotine. And you love your baby brother terribly. And when you’re angry you run Greek tragedies behind your eyes. And you are possibly one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. Besides the fact I’ll make you miserable sometimes too. Happiness isn’t everything.” 

“Sherlock knows,” he said machine gunning through her files one after the other, putting them into two stacks. His eyes flicked up to her and read her face without her having to say anything. 

“I never told him, he broke into my apartment and figured it out.”

Instead of replying he reached for the next stack. She stood as he worked and absently snagged the cold case file off the corner of her desk to give him more space to work.

“What’s that?” he froze.

“It’s just an old case. Already been solved.”

“It wouldn’t be on your desk if you weren’t dealing with it, did you not _listen_ to me? Are you-”

He was cut off when Sally stuck her head in, “Lestrade is everything al-”

“Go away,” he said with a voice that could carve into steel, Sally spun on one heel and fled after a catching a hint of Georgie’s faint nod. She was a better woman then most for no outright fleeing. “Give me the folder,” he tried Georgie with the same tone before closing his eyes and sighing, which was Mycroftian for _I’m sorry that was a stupid thing to do I wasn’t thinking._

“Don’t worry about it,” Georgie huffed and passed the folder over. I made her feel better that he had lost his temper. That he was worried.

“What set off your intuition? Sherlock would have caught the connection if it hadn’t been emotional,” he paused for a hair’s breadth. “This was the case where that infant stabbed you.”

“It was a cut, a small slashy sort of brushy motion.” Georgie was still trying to get back into the habit of remembering that Mycroft pretty much could read everybody’s mind all the time. She had had worse, he knew she had too. His fingertips had hung over the scar from the hunting knife in her back. The groove in the side of her thigh from a bullet that had been a bit too close back when she worked undercover, before she even met Mycroft. In comparison, it was strange that a scratch seemed to receive an obsessive amount of focus.

“It scarred,” he said without looking at her. “It was inexcusable.” He tilted his head one way and then the other before she was bumping shoulders with him and flipping through his stacks. She found the case for the girl in the factory and flipped it open for him. “What did you see?” he said, he had already seen something himself, but she was getting to put her two bits in.

Her fingertips slicked across the photograph of the girl. “I’ve seen a lot of dead girls. Most of the time it’s about winning something. Owning the female form, the female mind. Even when it’s meant to be romantic in some twisted way, it’s mean underneath. It’s grabby. This is cold. This isn’t a hunt, or fight, this is just empty. It means nothing.”

It hung between them silently that less than an hour ago Mycroft had admitted that he wanted to do something like own her. She said the same so that didn’t bother her much. Mycroft had the old lady serial killer case file open and set his palms together, leaning back on his heels, “Sometimes, very rarely, insight can trump the most rigorous of scientific testing. You were right, they’re connected. Also a member of your forensics team is a murderer.”

“WHAT!” she shouted. She hadn’t meant to at first, it just kind of spilt out. “One of my team did this?” If the murderer was taking the forensic shots, he must have overheard her talking to Sherlock about her suspicions. 

Mycroft winced slightly, which was to say one fingertip twitched. “He may have acted as a substitute. The first murder had an accomplice, more like a handler. The workmanship of the first was the manchild. The second the handler. But the photos have the same artistic sentiment, but there are other things. The killing of this victim is bloody and passionate, but afterward her body was arranged. Both by windows where there would be excellent lighting in the morning- Georgiana,” while he spoke she flipped through the paperwork to see who was taking pictures on forensics and was heading for the door. 

Mycroft was quick at her shoulder, curling his fingers around her elbow. “Be calm Georgiana,” his voice curled softly against her ear. “Don’t get hysterical.”

Georgie stopped and closed her eyes, calming herself, focusing on those long fingers curled around her elbow. “We’re going to-”

“Get your tubby hands _off_ her Mycroft,” snarled a familiar voice and Georgie groaned. This was quite possibly the worst ever time. Ever.

“Sherlock, this is not the time,” Mycroft snapped.

Sherlock rushed up to where they stood in her doorway, thankfully far enough over so that Mycroft could close the door behind him so the scene would be diminished. He raised himself as tall as he could manage hissing and snarling like an enraged cat, “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“And yet the evidence begs to differ,” Mycroft hissed back as cold as ice.

“What are you even doing here? Tired of playing with people in Parliament and thought you’d take a turn ruining my life?” Sherlock was getting himself up to a magnificently sized strop reminiscent of his lack of case rage at the world.

“I’m here for Georgiana,” Mycroft took a deep breath, apparently determined to be the bigger man. “This is one of those cases where not everything is about you.”

Sherlock’s head snapped back like he had been attention snapped to Georgie, “Did he say that he’d come back to you? That he’d stop abandoning you so that he could puff up his own gluttonous ego? Did he promise that he’d finally be there for your children? He’s just like Father like that.”

Mycroft _snarled_ , face gone furious and pale, he looked like he was ready to skin Sherlock with his _teeth_. “How dare you?”

“I’ve been there for her while you’ve been off sitting smugly in your club. _I_ helped her.”

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ compare me to Father. Not after everything I did for you. You _failed_ her,” Mycroft stabbed one finger into Sherlock’s breastbone so hard he flinched back into her office door, the blinds crackling against each other. The transformative rage surprising even Sherlock. “The twins were kidnapped because you missed several _huge, blaring_ clues. They’re missing right now, in danger because you couldn’t bother to spend enough attention when she asked you for help.”

“I didn’t!” Sherlock said, startled and furious and lost in sibling rivalry and whatever history happened in House Holmes.

That was when Georgie did what she had promised herself she wouldn’t do. She stagger back into a chair and started weeping hysterically into her hands. Narrow fingers came to her shoulders but she screeched, “Don’t touch me! Nobody touch me!”

There was a space of complete silence. Not even the AC dared make a sound. There was just her raggedy, weepy breathing so she sounded like an engine that wouldn’t start.

“Why do you two have to fight all the time? Why do you have to fight?” she screeched the last word at them ripping off her left shoe and throwing it at them. They both flinched as the shoe passed harmlessly between them. The rubber sole made a satisfying thunk against the wall.

There was a hesitant knock at her door then to make everything perfect and Mycroft took a step forward to hand her a white starched handkerchief at distance. “Yes?” she said after wiping off her face.

Gregson of all people stuck his head in. She moaned softly into Mycroft’s handkerchief before smiling at him as if it weren’t obvious she had been sobbing all of two second ago. “Are you…?” he eyes twitched to Mycroft quickly and his face visibly paled before he recovered from whatever he saw there. “Are you alright Lestrade?”

“A member of the Yard’s forensic team is apparently a secret serial killer, who having overheard me mention one of their previous murders decided to kidnap my children.”

If anything Gregson’s face went paler. At length he said, “Oh. Who’s working the…?”

“Local constabulary,” she said, stood, only wavered once and had three men flinch in her direction. She straightened imperiously if lopsidedly. She had forgotten she had been wearing a bit of a heel. Mycroft went for her shoe, his face away from her, the curve of his back lit by the florescent lighting. He didn’t say he was sorry, he never said he was sorry, only knelt too quickly for her to do anything other than blink. His hand caught behind her knee and skimmed down the curve of her calf to catch her heel in the curl of his hand and slip her foot into her shoe. It was done so quickly she had no time to do anything but stare. The sleek shine of her hair, the edifice of his shoulders, the beauty of each motion, the drag of his fingertips as he moved and braced her. As he slowly stood in front of her, all her longing, her panicking heart, the readiness to fight. Her tipped up face and the iron and marble in him tipping down toward her. There was so much in him, she wondered what made him kneel to help her when she was in anguish. Mycroft Holmes slipping her foot into her shoe was something beyond her ken. Mycroft Holmes on his knees was beyond her ken. 

He stood quickly, pulling straight his coat, when she opened her mouth to give him some wondering affection he reached out in the narrow space between their bodies and caressed her wedding ring. “I know,” he said gently.

“Sherlock can go with me while you take care of things from your side,” she said finally.

“Crying women scare him,” Mycroft said.

“That’s fine,” Georgie said, her breath soft and floating. “He’s a brave kid. He’ll watch out for me.” 

Mycroft nodded once and moved, picking up his umbrella from where it leaned against her desk. “Take care,” he said, tilting his head as if they had finished a business meeting. He gave Gregson a condescending sniff to get him out of the doorway and hurried on his way.

It was as if a mountain had disappeared from the landscape and now no one quite knew what to do. Good thing Georgie was used to Holmeses.

“Well,” she said and clapped her hands and then discovering them all cry-y, stuffed Mycroft’s handkerchief into her pocket and slathered on the disinfectant she kept on her desk. “I really must be off to interview some witnesses.”

“Will they give you any trouble?” Gregson said, eyebrows coming together. “I mean is there anything I can do to help?”

“Seeing as the primary witness is my brother, I don’t think they can really stop me.”

Sherlock who at this point was staring at everything with a child’s huge injured eyes, standing in a little moat of isolated suffering, blinked and came over to loom next to her. He squeezed her fingers gently, for his own comfort instead of her own, but she still counted it. “Mummy,” Sherlock said and pulled at her fingers. “Mummy.”

“Wait, he’s your son?” Gregson said, face all pulled and confused.

“How old exactly do you think I am?” she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Call if you need any help,” Gregson swallowed and disappeared.

“Excellent work Mummy,” Sherlock started pulling her along and out the door. “I’ll find them first, you’ll see.”

“I’m not mad Sherlock.”

“I’ll find them first,” he said again and held tight to her fingers.


End file.
